Out of the Blue
Toward an understanding of International Klein Blue — Yves Klein was not only interested in the seeing of colour, but in the being of colour…
Yves Klein had been working with canvases of a single colour since the early 1950s and in 1957, as part of a solo exhibition he titled, Proposte Monocrome, Epoca Blu / Monochrome Proposition, Blue Epoch, he presented eleven canvases painted a uniform vivid blue. They were hung unframed and suspended on wires away from the gallery wall so they appeared to hover in the air. He stated an intention to produce “invisible paintings”, where the canvas disappears behind the colour.
Working with a paint manufacturer, he had developed a new medium for the mixing of pigment that retained the pure brilliance of its colour. Instead of traditional mediums, such as vegetable oils which dulled the intensity, he mixed pure pigment in polyvinyl acetate (PVA), a synthetic substance. Acrylic paints had recently been developed and were being used by interior decorators and a few artists. These new paints could be diluted with water, yet dried waterproof and were easier to use and cheaper than oil paints.
The use of PVA as a medium produced a similar effect. The technique that Klein introduced could use any pure pigment. In his famous blue paintings he…
