The Brilliant And Tragic Life Of Yves Klein
Extraordinary artist who combined conceptual art with spiritual yearning in a tragically short life
Christopher P Jones is the author of How to Read Paintings, an introduction to some of the most fascinating artworks in art history.
Some artists take decades to blossom; others appear to arrive fully formed. Yves Klein was one of the latter, an artist whose first and last works were only fifteen years or so apart.
Or is this just a trick of history? Somehow his early death, at the age of just 34, confers a sense of completeness over his art that seems to level out the beginning and end to even points of significance. There is not the luxury of decades; he died too quickly to fill a lifespan of ups and downs.
Whenever I think about Yves Klein, I tend to reach this same problem. After the excitement about his wonderful and distinctive career has calmed down, I hit upon the question: where was Yves Klein going to next?
Klein was born on 28th April 1928 in the south of France, and grew up near the French Riviera town of Nice, a city that glows with old-world affluence under a Mediterranean sun. Beloved of Chagall, Picasso and Renoir, Nice was also the home of Henri Matisse for much of his adult life.
