Art and Heart Attacks: I

Yves Klein
IKB 79 1959
Paint on canvas on wood
object: 1397 x 1197 x 32 mm

From the Tate Gallery description:

In 1947, Klein began making monochrome paintings, which he associated with freedom from ideas of representation or personal expression. A decade later, he developed his trademark, patented colour, International Klein Blue (IKB). This colour, he believed, had a quality close to pure space, and he associated it with immaterial values beyond what can be seen or touched. He described it as ‘a Blue in itself, disengaged from all functional justification’. Klein made around 200 monochrome paintings using IKB. He did not give titles to these works but, after his death, his widow assigned a number to.

Klein died of a heart attack at the age of 34.

His widow said in an interview:

Klein-Moquay: He had a premonition about his death. He even talked to me about it. He thought he should die for the immaterial, for the exhibition he had just finished. He had sad eyes when he told me this. The price to pay for the immaterial was to give his life. He felt it very strongly. That’s why he was in such a hurry to paint. He could look ahead in time. Somehow he was already in the future.

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