Yves Klein, *Timbre bleu*, 1959
Yves Klein (1928–1962)
Timbre bleu (Blue Stamp), 1959
Invitation to the exhibition *Bas-reliefs dans une forêt d’éponges*, Galerie Iris Clert, Paris, 1959
TheBlue Stamp is a miniature created between 1957 and 1959 by the French artist Yves Klein,
consisting of a real perforated postage stamp coated with his famous International Klein Blue (IKB) pigment .
He used these stamps to frank actual letters when sending invitations or mail.
The stamp offered here was affixed to an envelope containing an invitation to the artist’s exhibition.
The addressee is Aleksander Henisz, an art critic and organizer of the Polish art scene in Paris.
Both of his parents were painters. He attended the Merchant Marine School in Nice (1942–1946), receiving no formal artistic training. In the early 1950s, he lived in Japan. Despite a brief artistic career—lasting only eight years (1954 to 1962)—he is today considered one of the most important figures of the postwar avant-garde. He created paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs, and theater and film sets, and wrote several important texts in which he challenged the traditional concept of art, its creation, and its presentation. He gained international recognition as the first creator of monochromes (he had been creating compositions of this kind since 1946). Klein registered his favorite painting color—ultramarine—under the name International Klein Blue. IKB is an extremely intense, luminous blue, achieved according to a formula that Klein developed himself.
He died of a heart attack at the age of 34.
The artist used various colors, but from the late 1950s onward, he used almost exclusively the blue he had invented. He became famous as the creator of paintings made without a brush. At times, he used the bodies of nude models as “tools”; after being painted with the pigment, they left imprints on paper or canvas. The works created in this way, called Anthropometries, captured the imprints of gestures and the physical energy of the bodies. Klein created other works using fire—patterns emerged from the soot that settled on the canvases.
Yves Klein (1928–1962)
Timbre bleu (Blue Stamp), 1959
Invitation to the exhibition *Bas-reliefs dans une forêt d’éponges*, Galerie Iris Clert, Paris, 1959
TheBlue Stamp is a miniature created between 1957 and 1959 by the French artist Yves Klein,
consisting of a real perforated postage stamp coated with his famous International Klein Blue (IKB) pigment .
He used these stamps to frank actual letters when sending invitations or mail.
The stamp offered here was affixed to an envelope containing an invitation to the artist’s exhibition.
The addressee is Aleksander Henisz, an art critic and organizer of the Polish art scene in Paris.
Both of his parents were painters. He attended the Merchant Marine School in Nice (1942–1946), receiving no formal artistic training. In the early 1950s, he lived in Japan. Despite a brief artistic career—lasting only eight years (1954 to 1962)—he is today considered one of the most important figures of the postwar avant-garde. He created paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs, and theater and film sets, and wrote several important texts in which he challenged the traditional concept of art, its creation, and its presentation. He gained international recognition as the first creator of monochromes (he had been creating compositions of this kind since 1946). Klein registered his favorite painting color—ultramarine—under the name International Klein Blue. IKB is an extremely intense, luminous blue, achieved according to a formula that Klein developed himself.
He died of a heart attack at the age of 34.
The artist used various colors, but from the late 1950s onward, he used almost exclusively the blue he had invented. He became famous as the creator of paintings made without a brush. At times, he used the bodies of nude models as “tools”; after being painted with the pigment, they left imprints on paper or canvas. The works created in this way, called Anthropometries, captured the imprints of gestures and the physical energy of the bodies. Klein created other works using fire—patterns emerged from the soot that settled on the canvases.
