伊夫·克萊因

Sidney Janis Gallery, New York
Alexandre Iolas, Athens
Acquired from the above by the present owner in the 1970s

Paris, Musée des arts décoratifs, Yves Klein 1928-1962, January - March 1969
New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, Monochrome Paintings, Sponge Reliefs, Fire & Drag by Yves Klein, March - April 1977, cat. no. 24, n.p., illustrated

Paul Wember, Yves Klein, Cologne, 1969, p. 123, illustrated

This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals two very small ¼" circular areas of very faint wear towards the lower right edge; a thin and faint 2½" diagonal rubmark just above the right of center; a hairline vertical 4½" rubmark towards the center right of the bottom right quadrant; and a horizontal 1" rubmark to the right lower center of the bottom right quadrant. There are 3 very small and minor areas of skinning towards the bottom left corner; 2 minor losses towards the top left corner; and 2 minute specks of loss towards the center left of the bottom edge. Under ultraviolet light there are no apparent restorations. The work retains the original wood strip frame, which has also been intermittently charred by the flames and has slight wear to its tips and edges. The painting and original frame are mounted in a wood frame, painted white, under Plexiglas with a 3 inch float.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Created in the year immediately preceding Yves Klein’s untimely and tragic death, Fire Painting (F5) 1961 is exemplary of the final phase of his artistic evolution. Wielding an industrial blowtorch, Klein envisioned a composition created through the alchemical potential of fire – a dually destructive and creative force. As he dramatically scorched the canvas, Klein simultaneously harnessed the life-giving power of fire, expending it to compose his painterly forms. The effect is one of synchronized absence and presence, the most sophisticated evocation of the indefinable and immaterial Void in Klein’s illustrious and highly conceptual career.

Led by France’s foremost art critic Pierre Restany, the foundation of Nouveau Réalisme in the living room of Klein’s apartment on October 27^th, 1960, signified a radical turning point in post-war art history. Propelling the nascent movement’s momentum during the early 1960s, Yves Klein zealously pursued the principle of immateriality in painting. In the late 1950s he had isolated a luminous blue monochrome – his “International Klein Blue,” or “IKB” – as the locus for his painterly endeavor towards ‘spiritual materialism’; however, by the 1960s fire had become another element in Klein’s arsenal against gestural abstraction. For Klein fire represented the elemental force par excellence of symbolic, spiritual and physical transfiguration. Klein’s renowned Chelsea Hotel Manifesto of 1961 encapsulates his project: “In sum, my goal is twofold: first of all, to register the trace of human sentimentality in present-day civilization; secondly to register the trace of fire which has engendered this very same civilization. And this because the void has always been my constant preoccupation; and I hold that in the heart of the void as well as in the heart of man, fires are burning.” (Yves Klein, "Chelsea Hotel Manifesto," New York, 1961 cited in Pierre Restany, Yves Klein: Fire at the Heart of the Void, Connecticut, 2005, p. XV)

One of Klein’s earliest experimentations with fire, F5 is a stunning demonstration of his ultimate artistic goal. Dramatic and powerful in its gradation from panel lightly kissed by the flames to distinct forms resulting from prolonged contact with Klein’s blowtorch, the present work evokes “the final threshold of the presence of absence, flesh’s dilution in the immaterial, the sublimated and sublimating expanse.” (Ibid., p. 47) Rather than being created with human models like the Anthropometrie paintings, the forms are elicited here by the spectacular fashion in which Klein brandished his torch and are decidedly evocative of the human figure. Predominantly horizontal, and displaying limb-like appendages, the three fire darkened shapes that structure the composition clearly resemble shadows, seemingly frozen in perpetual silhouette. In bursts of formidable energy, Klein’s torch moved up and down his composition, at once negating its surface and describing the presence of human life.

Notoriously guided by a rigid ideological code, Klein possessed a deeply mystic sensibility that united fire’s double value: the alchemical and the spiritual. Alongside the elements of earth, air and water, fire’s prima material status and annihilative force provided the ultimate transcendence of Klein’s monochrome adventure. In the present work, the immediacy and expansiveness of his IKB paintings – the endless and all-consuming blue as Klein’s actualization of the immaterial – is transformed into a highly modulated surface, where fiery tendrils seem to emerge and disappear into the panel itself. In F5, the pure and concentrated application of the fire hose has engendered a landscape of distinctly defined forms surrounded by less dense oval shapes that seem to float, effectively destabilizing any perception of earthly atmosphere.

With his Fire Paintings Klein realized those invisible concepts that had obsessed him throughout his career and which he had previously pursued through the irrepressible allure of the monochrome and the alchemical mystery of gold. This realization, as expressed by Restany, turned out to be the apogee of his spectacular and tragically brief career: “Through the fire’s flame, Yves Klein found his style’s all-powerfulness, the immediate means to setting without other recourse or alterations the trace of his sensibility’s momentary states…[the Fire Paintings] reflect the entire panorama of the monochrome artist’s affective life.” (Ibid., p. 47) With fire Klein arrived at a medium that was immaterial and essential: light and life itself. Evocatively and contemplatively describing both the void and the traces of human life, F5 exists as an essential part of Yves Klein’s prodigious legacy.