Yves Klein

Private Collection, Aspen
Neal Meltzer Fine Arts, New York
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2000

Aspen, Art Museum, Powder, 1999, n.p., illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the colour of the sponge is IKB blue and the image fails to fully convey the texture of the sponge. Condition: This work is in very good condition.
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"One day I noticed the beauty of the blue in the sponge; at once this working tool became raw material for me. It is that extraordinary faculty of the sponge to become impregnated with whatever may be fluid that seduced me."

The artist in 1958, cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, Houston, Institute for the Arts, Rice University, Yves Klein 1928-1962: A Retrospective, 1982, p. 111

Yves Klein's meteoric career was devoted to a relentless search for an immaterial world beyond our own. To this end he developed modes of expression that fused together a sweeping array of profoundly held interests in aesthetics, nature and mysticism. Among these artistic dialects the Sculptures Éponge issue the most immediate manifestation of the complex mysteries that filled the artist's life.

Klein discovered the sponge as a sculptural object in 1958: "In working on my pictures in my studio, I sometimes used sponges. They became blue very quickly, obviously! One day I noticed the beauty of the blue in the sponge; at once this working tool became raw material for me. It is that extraordinary faculty of the sponge to become impregnated with whatever may be fluid that seduced me. Thanks to the sponges - raw living matter - I was going to be able to make portraits of the observers of my monochromes, who, after having seen, after having voyaged in the blue of my pictures, return totally impregnated in sensibility, as are the sponges" (the artist in 1958, cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, Houston, Institute for the Arts, Rice University, Yves Klein 1928-1962: A Retrospective, 1982, p. 111).

Saturated with Klein's striking International Klein Blue, the present sponge radiates intrigue and mystery. The soft, powdery texture of pigment is here absorbed into a labiryth of natural crevices. Catching the light as it trickles across its surface the tonality resplendently variegates from light to dark, as if recalling the reflection of water across its spectacularly articulated surface. The sheer power of the IKB pigment unifies the topography of the sponge to such a degree that the exact landscape of the surface is not always discernible: Klein's spellbinding blue overcomes silhouette and contour. The labyrinthine spaces within the sponges create multifaceted schemas of light and shadow while the extraordinary potency of Klein's blue seems to fill these void matrices with a colouristic energy independent of physical form. Enigmatically evocative of some otherworldly organism, Sculpture Éponge encapsulates the artist's pure concept of ethereal intangibility.

Initiated in 1958, the corpus of uniquely beautiful sponge sculptures evolved from Klein's iconic Monochromes as an extension of his exploration into nature and space. First exhibited in June 1959 at the Galerie Iris Clert in Paris, Klein presented his lavishly saturated sponge sculptures of varying heights, shapes and textures, grouped together along the sides of a small room, transforming the gallery into a lush, crowded and mysteriously zen-like environment. Indeed, very much engaged with the spiritual and physical harmony of Zen philosophy, Klein enlisted the sponge as a metaphor to explain how diverse, isolated and separate elements can harmoniously coexist. As aquatic animals, sponges have evolved over hundreds of millions of years into bodies of maximum surface area and exceptional absorption qualities in order to extract food and oxygen as efficiently as possible from the constant flow of water passing through them. As a living being, the shape of a sponge changes, but extracted from its life-support of plankton-filled seawater it is frozen in its final, ultimate form. In the present work this outstanding facet of natural selection is profusely drenched in Klein's blue, resulting in an organic architecture of immeasurable chromatic depth. In the same way that sand, water and the air within water together saturate a sponge, various facets of material and immaterial worlds saturate our existence. Klein's corpus of saturated sponges translates this multifaceted conceptual philosophy into breathtaking material physicality.