OUGD404 - Studio Brief 01 - Klein Blue

International Klein Blue (IKB) is a deep blue hue mixed and produced by French artist, Yves Klein in 1960. Klein Blue comes from the matte, synthetic resin binder of the colour Ultramarine, known as polyvinyl acetate, in which the colour is suspended. This allows the pigment to maintain its original brightness and intensity of colour.

Klein assigned a specific role to the colour blue, which for him represented abstract elements of nature, such as the sky and the sea. Later on in his career, he extensively used this colour within his work, such as in his monochromatic works which used IKB as the central theme and thus the colour itself became the artwork. This included performance pieces that involved painting naked bodies and directing them to use their bodies as "a living paintbrush", which aimed to record the body's physical energy. Klein compared these paintings to an "open window to freedom" and suggested IKB as a way of revealing the immateriality of his own utopian vision of the world. There are almost 200 works in his monochrome series and were all numbered by his wide Rotraut Klein-Moquay from IKB 1 to IKB 194, which do not represent a chronological order.

Another source of inspiration for Klein came from Eastern religion. His works have said to reflect his own religion, being Catholicism, as a symbol for the Holy Ghost and of Virgin Mary's robes depicted in traditional renaissance paintings. For this reason, Klein has been compared to the likes of Joseph Beuys who was also influenced by elements of romanticism and mysticism.

Yves Klein, Anthropometries, 1960-61.