THE SKY AS A STUDIO. YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES by CENTRE POMPIDOU METZ

Charles Wilp, Yves Klein sur une échelle devant son relief-éponge au Neues Stadttheater de Gelsenkirchen — Allemagne, Berlin, BPK © VG Bild-Kunst © Succession Yves Klein c/o ADAGP, Paris 2019 Photo © BPK, Berlin, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / image BPK — Graphisme : LSD Studio

YVES KLEIN

AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

18.07.20 01.02.21

PRESS KIT

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THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION...................................................................................5 2. YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES...........................................6 3. EXHIBITION LAYOUT............................................................................8 4. CATALOGUE.......................................................................................23 5. LIST OF PRESENTED ARTISTS...........................................................24 6. YOUNG PUBLIC AND ASSOCIATED PROGRAMMING..........................25 7. PARTNERS........................................................................................27 8. IMAGES AVAILABLE FOR THE PRESS................................................29

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

Yves Klein dans la salle dédiée à la Sensibilité picturale immatérielle, dite du Vide [Raum der Leere], dans l’exposition « Yves Klein : Monochrome und Feuer », Krefeld, Museum Haus Lange, janvier 1961 © Charles Wilp / BPK, Berlin © Succession Yves Klein c/o Adagp, Paris, 2020

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

1. INTRODUCTION THE SKY AS A STUDIO. YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES From July 18th 2020 to February 1st 2021 GRANDE NEF

From 18th July 2020, the Centre Pompidou-Metz will present an exhibition devoted to Yves Klein (19281962), a major figure on the post-war French and European art scene. Beyond the Nouveaux Réalistes movement to which critics, in line with the opinion of Pierre Restany, mainly associated him, Yves Klein developed close ties with a whole host of artists, from the spatial artists in Italy to the ZERO and NUL groups in Germany and the Netherlands. He also maintained certain affinities - albeit more distant and less assertive - with the Gutai group in Japan. Alongside these groups, Yves Klein, the "space painter", took art into a new dimension where the sky, the air, the void and the cosmos are an immaterial workshop conducive to reinventing man's relationship with the world, after the tabula rasa created by the war.

the effective motors during the first two decades of the twentieth century, it was being evacuated", by Klein and his contemporaries, "in favour of a total aestheticisation -even of politics - which was advancing 'ever further' on the cinders of history1". The new visual arts strategies developed aim to go beyond the materiality of the work of art, seen as an obstacle to freedom, and to experiment with monochrome, emptiness and light, in gestures where the work is, like Lucio Fontana's lacerated or perforated canvases, open to infinity. This cosmogonic aspiration was shared by these artists who, like Klein, combined water and fire, earth and air. The works of light by Günther Uecker, Otto Piene and Heinz Mack, which evoke galaxies in formation, thus keeping back their anguish in the face of the threat of nuclear war. In the age of the conquest of space, the poetic dimension of the cosmos is put to the test, and Klein asserts: "It will not be with rockets, sputniks or space crafts that man will achieve the conquest of space because, in this way, he will always remain a tourist in this space; but it is by inhabiting it with sensitivity2". This generation of artists, fired by a libertarian idealism, conceived the sky as an immaterial and spiritual shield against the nuclear arms race and the proliferation of its artificial suns.

In a world marked by the still-present memory of the Second World War, and in the context of the Cold War and the atomic threat, artists started abandoning traditional techniques in favour of actions or performances where the intensity of life is ever present. Conversely, the use of monochrome, emptiness or light, the aspiration to a zone of silence, collective and festive manifestations are also part of another perception of the world, marked by reconstruction and the birth of new utopias. As Antje Kramer states, "if subversion was one of 1

Antje Kramer, L’ Aventure allemande du Nouveau Réalisme. Réalités et fantasmes d’une néo-avant-garde européenne (1957-1963), Dijon, Les Presses du réel,

2012, p. 330. 2

Yves Klein, « L’évolution de l’art vers l’immatériel. Conférence à la Sorbonne » (1959), repr. in Le dépassement de la problématique de l’art et autres écrits, Marie-

Anne Sichère et Didier Semin (éd.), Paris, Beaux-Arts de Paris éditions, 2003, rééd. 2011, p. 122.

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

2. YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES Yves Klein was born in Nice on 28th April 1928, to artist parents - Fred Klein (1898-1990) and Marie Raymond (1908-1989). His mother, an abstract painter, frequented many artists and representatives of the world of arts and letters such as the Lettrists in Nice and Paris. During his youth in Nice, he discovered a passion for judo (meaning "the practice of art" in Japanese), which at that time was less of a sport than a method of intellectual and moral education aimed at selfcontrol. In 1946, Yves Klein symbolically signed l’envers du ciel (the other side of the sky) as being "the most beautiful and greatest of [his] works1." From then on, he strove to make visible the infinity of space through his "monochrome adventure" and the quest for immaterial art that he initiated at the turn of the 1950s and continued until his death.

whom he would collaborate on the construction site of the Gelsenkirchen opera house (1957-1959). At his first exhibition in Germany, at the Schmela Gallery in Düsseldorf, Yves Klein met Otto Piene and Heinz Mack, who would form the ZERO Group in the same year, later joined by Günther Uecker. Shortly afterwards, Klein met Rotraut Uecker, a young artist who would accompany him in his projects and become his wife in 1962.

Between 1952 and 1954, Yves Klein stayed in Tokyo, Japan, where he dedicated himself to obtaining the 4th dan in judo at the Kôdôkan institute - he was the first Frenchman to reach such a level. Upon his return, he published his book Les Fondements du judo, [The Fundamental Principles of Judo] as well as a collection of monochromes under the title Yves Peintures [Yves Paintings]. He then perfected the production of the famous ultramarine blue IKB (International Klein Blue), which in his eyes took on a spiritual dimension. 1957 marked the beginning of Yves Klein's international career: on the occasion of the exhibition of his blue monochromes at the Galleria Apollinaire in Milan (Yves Klein. Proposte monocrome, epoca blu, 2-12 January 1957), he befriended Lucio Fontana and met Piero Manzoni, with whom he maintained complex ties despite their affinities. Manzoni, inspired by Klein's approach, soon afterwards dedicated himself to his series of Achromes. In March, the gallery owner Iris Clert introduced Klein to the artist Norbert Kricke and the architect Werner Ruhnau, with 1

Yves Klein, Monochrome bleu sans titre, (IKB 4), 1961 © Succession Yves Klein c/o Adagp, Paris, 2020 - Cliché : Adagp Images

Yves Klein, « Manifeste de l'Hôtel Chelsea, New York, 1961 », repr. in Le dépassement de la problématique de l’art et autres écrits, op.cit., p. 310.

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

It was also in 1957 that Yves Klein created his first immaterial works, on the occasion of two joint exhibitions in Paris, Yves Klein: Propositions monochromes simultaneously at the Iris Clert Gallery and the Colette Allendy Gallery. At Iris Clert's, the advent of the "Blue Era" is celebrated with the release of 1,001 blue balloons into the Paris sky at the inauguration, christened Sculpture aérostatique (aerostatic sculpture). At Colette Allendy's, he presented his first Peinture de Feu [Fire Painting] and the first Immatériel [immaterial] on the first floor of the gallery: Surfaces and blocks of pictorial sensitivity. Pictorial Intentions, which consists of a room left completely empty. This research around the immaterial reaches its apogee the following year with the exhibition on the specialisation of sensibility in the raw material state into stabilised pictorial sensibility, known as the exhibition of the Void, at the Iris Clert Gallery

The following spring the first major group exhibition of the ZERO galaxy, Vision in Motion / Motion in Vision, was held at the Hessenhuis in Antwerp. The group published the third issue of its magazine in 1961, which included two important texts by Klein. This publication gave rise to a festive event, ZERO. Exhibition Demonstration Edition at the Schmela Gallery in Düsseldorf, which marked Günther Uecker's official membership of ZERO. Yves Klein continued his pursuit of beauty in its invisible state: "Art is wherever the artist turns up". His dream of inhabiting the sky, which becomes clearer in his project for an Architecture de l’air [Air Architecture] developed with architect Claude Parent, is part of a context of utopian research into new ways of living. In a spiritual approach, he integrates the use of natural elements into his paintings: his first experiments, in 1957, lead to his powerful Peintures de Feu [Fire Paintings] in 1961, and in 1960 he produced his first Cosmogonies, works produced with the help of atmospheric phenomena.

In 1958, Yves Klein took part in the first exhibition of the ZERO group and published his text "Ma position dans le combat de la ligne et de la couleur " [My position in the fight for line and for colour] in the first issue of the eponymous magazine. In the same year, together with the sculptor Jean Tinguely, who was also associated with the Gelsenkirchen project, he produced several collaborative works machines with metal discs covered with IKB paint and rotating at high speed - for their exhibition Vitesse pure et stabilité monochrome (Sheer Speed and Monochrome Stability) at the Galerie Iris Clert in Paris (17-30 November 1958).

Just before his death on 6th June, 1962, Yves Klein is said to have confided to a friend: "I'm going to enter the biggest studio in the world. And I will only create immaterial works there. "

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

3. THE EXHIBITION LAYOUT The exhibition proposes a dialogue between the works of Yves Klein and those of his contemporaries, highlighting their historical ties as well as their aesthetic and philosophical affinities. The thematic journey gives an account of the evolution of a generational artistic practice, which operates a passage from the material to the immaterial, from the visible to the invisible, from the earth to the sky, from the human body to the cosmos. Taking the ruins of the war as a starting point, the journey gradually leads the visitor into space, the dreamed of studio of these artists. The scenography designed by Laurence Fontaine highlights the process of dematerialisation that took place at the turn of the 1960s. In the manner of spatialist works that go beyond the limits of the canvas to open them up to another dimension, the curved walls and blurred edges render obscure the boundary between the work and the spectator. The exhibition layout aims to create immersive environments, where the artists' research around immaterial and natural elements becomes meaningful. SECTION I (ROOM 1): THE WORLD YEAR ZERO SECTION II (ROOM 2): INTENSIVE BODIES SECTION III (ROOM 3): WHITE ZONES SECTION IV (ROOMS 4 AND 5): PIERCING THE SKY SECTION V (ROOMS 6 AND 7): VOID THEATRES SECTION VI (ROOM 8): AIR ARCHITECTURES SECTION VII (ROOMS 9 AND 10): COSMOGONIES SECTION VIII (ROOM 11): COLOURS INHABITING SPACE SECTION IX (ROOMS 12, 13, 14): COSMIC VISIONS

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

SECTION I: THE WORLD YEAR ZERO in the manifesto of the Gutai (meaning "concrete" in Japanese), group he founded in 1954, "when we allow ourselves to be seduced by the ruins, the dialogue initiated by the cracks and crevices may well be the form of revenge that the material has taken to recover its original state1."

Whilst the Second World War left devastated landscapes and ruined monuments, this dilapidated topography became a breeding ground for creativity. In Germany, where "zero hour" was decreed, the massive destruction prompted artists, such as the members of the future ZERO group, to create new art on the rubble. In 1956, Jirō Yoshihara, wrote 1

Jiro Yoshihara, Manifeste de l’art Gutai, 1956, repr. in Japon des avant-gardes 1910-1970, Germain VIATTE et Takashina SHUJI (dir.), 11 décembre 1986 – 2 mars

1987, Paris, Centre Pompidou, 1986, p. 293.

Yves Klein and Kazuo Shiraga

Yves Klein, Anthropophagie bleue, Hommage à Tennessee Williams, (ANT 76), 1960 : Photo : © Philippe Migeat - Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI /Dist. RMN-GP © Succession Yves Klein c/o ADAGP Paris, 2020

Kazuo Shiraga, Chizensei Kirenji [Le combattant chinois Du Xing dit Face de Démon], 1961. Wijnegem, Axel & May Vervoordt Foundation . © The Estate of Kazuo Shiraga. Courtesy of Fergus McCaffrey, New York / St. Barth. © Jan Liégeois / courtesy Axel & May Vervoordt Foundation

The two works by Yves Klein and Kazuo Shiraga seem to suggest a sublimation of bodies pulverized by the bombardments, which are a testimony of "hope for the survival and permanence, even immaterial, of flesh1". Shiraga's resolutely monochromatic cochineal reflects the organic heat of the circulatory system within us just like Klein’s celebrated luminescent blue can also symbolize the color of blood2.

By confronting the body with matter, the artists propose a new way of apprehending the creative act. Clinging to a rope suspended from the ceiling, Shiraga tramples the canvas on the floor, making the form blossom on contact with his feet, when Klein directs from a distance his Anthropometries; ballets performed by bruised skin. The canvas, transformed into a battlefield, records the movements of life including its weaknesses.

Yves Klein, « Le vrai devient réalité », ZERO, no 3, 1961, repr. in Le dépassement…, p. 284.

« " Le sang de la sensibilité est bleu ", dit Shelley et c’est exactement mon avis. » Yves Klein, « L’évolution de l’art vers l’immatériel. Conférence à la Sorbonne »

(1959), repr. in Le dépassement…, op. cit., p. 122.

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

SECTION II: INTENSIVE BODIES Kanayama in Footprints (1956), appear to be proof of the survival of the individual. Artists seem to be seeking to imprint themselves more literally on the world in order to fight against the inescapable disappearance of the being.

In Japan, the bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the summer of 1945 transformed the ethereal stillness of the sky into a place of atomic threats where the din of the explosions resounded. The film Il est toujours bon de vivre [It is always good to live], directed by Fumio Kamei, discovered by Yves Klein when it was released in 1956, shows the silhouettes, scorched onto the walls, of the bodies blown up by the bombs. "We must - and this is no exaggeration - realise that we live in the atomic age, where everything material and physical can disappear overnight[...]1" warned Yves Klein. This revelation of the ephemeral is part of the upheavals in the visual arts initiated by a whole generation of artists and opens the way to immaterial art, at the crossroads between painting and performance. Klein's Anthropometries, imprints left on the canvas by nude female models previously covered with pigments, Kazuo Shiraga's inspired struggle with matter in Challenging Mud (1955), or the Footprints spread over the ground by Akira 1

Yves Klein, Anthropométrie de l’Epoque Bleue, (ANT 82), 1960 Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne © Succession Yves Klein c/o Adagp, Paris, 2020 Photo : © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Adam Rzepka/Dist. RMN-GP

Klein, « Ma position dans le combat entre la ligne et la couleur », ZERO, no 1, avril 1958, repr. in Le dépassement…, op. cit.,p. 50-51.

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

SECTION III: WHITE ZONES cotton, Manzoni's Achromes do not involve painting and exclude interpretation. White is not "a polar landscape, an evocative or beautiful material, a sensation or a symbol or anything else2", on the contrary, it allows for the liberation and "infinity" of the surface. With Enrico Castellani, who shares this same need for white, Manzoni creates Azimut(h), a gallery and magazine that from 1959 would be the instrument of their exchanges and collaborations with the European and Japanese groups that would participate in the monochrome adventure.

From 1961 to 1966, a dozen group exhibitions took up the theme of white monochrome, attesting to the diversity of its developments. A symbol of purity and rebirth, white meets the aspirations of artists who want to wipe out the past. Whether it implies the invisible, the infinite, silence, space or light, it allows the total liberation of the surface. Applied rigorously on a canvas or more broadly on walls, it invades the space of representation in which the spectator is invited to enter. If Kasimir Malévitch was the first to experiment with monochrome, by exhibiting his Carré blanc sur fond blanc [White on White] in 1918, it was only after the war that a generation of artists, as Dominique Stella reminds us, "set out to rewrite the world on this blank page of history. Redo everything, rethink everything, start from scratch1. » As early as 1946, Lucio Fontana inspired the publication of the Manifiesto Blanco [White Manifesto], which laid the foundations of his spatialist theory, a new artistic concept aspiring to go beyond the flatness and materiality of the surface. Under the aegis of this tutelary figure, the new Milanese generation was able to discover Klein's first blue monochromes as early as 1957 at the Galleria Apollinaire. Piero Manzoni, wanting to abolish colour, then gave birth to his white works, which he generically named Achromes in 1959. Made of kaolin, fibreglass, pleated fabrics or woven

Enrico Castellani, Superficie angolare bianca n°6 [Superficie angulaire blanche n°6], 1964 Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne © Enrico Castellani / Adagp, Paris, 2020 Photo : © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP

Dominique Stella, « Les œuvres blanches : Europe, années 1950-1960 », extrait du catalogue de l’exposition

Piero Manzoni, « Libera dimensione », Azimuth, no 2, Milan, 1960 ; trad. fr. « Libre dimension », repris in Contre rien, textes réunis et traduits de l’italien par

Martina Cardelli et Danielle Orhan, Paris, Allia, 2002, p. 43 sqq.

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

In France, Claude Bellegarde produced white monochromes as early as 1951, revealing a spiritual quest that was not without influence on Klein's work. In 1957 he began a series of thirteen white monochromes, which he completed in 1960, and which prefigured the immaterial space of the Void, which took place in April-May 1958 at the Iris Clert Gallery in Paris. Created in 1961 for his first institutional retrospective (Yves Klein: Monochrome und Feuer, at the Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld, Germany), the Empty Room, a completely void room entirely covered with white paint, appears to be another absolute manifestation of this ethereal expansion.

Thus, Yves Klein declared, paraphrasing Malévitch: "I conquered the deepest depths of the coloured sky, I removed the colour from it, and having put it in a creator’s sack, I made a knot. Aviator of the future, fly! White, free and boundless, infinity is before you4. »

As a homage to Yves Klein's Vide, [Empty] Günther Uecker performed at the event Zero. Edition Exhibition Demonstration at the Schmela Gallery in Düsseldorf on 5th July 1961. Equipped with a "broom-paintbrush", he drew a large white circle on the cobblestones, designed as a take-off runway leading to the new mysteries and artistic creations of his time. From the beginning, ZERO had always referred to it as "a zone of silence and pure possibilities for a new beginning, as in the countdown when the rockets take off3". For Otto Piene and Heinz Mack, the founders of ZERO, white is coveted for its structuring capacities that promote the vibration of the pictorial surface and are part of their search for the exaltation of light. For Uecker and Klein, the colour white is conducive to a spiritual experience, and can also reveal other forces.

Otto Piene,« The development of the Group " Zero "», cité in Denys Riout,« Présences du monochrome », La Peinture monochrome. Histoire et archéologie d’un

genre, Nîmes, Éditions Jacqueline Chambon, 1996, réé. 2006, p. 182. 4

Piero Manzoni, Achrome, 1959 Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne © Adagp, Paris, 2020 Photo : © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. RMN-GP

Yves Klein, « L’aventure monochrome », repr. in Le dépassement…, op. cit., p. 265

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

SECTION IV: PIERCING THE SKY In the post-war period, artists showed a willingness to go beyond painting and canvas and to experiment with new materials. The use of fire as a medium was a response to this quest to dematerialize the work of art. Alberto Burri was one of the first European artists to integrate this element into his paintings: he burned the support of his works as early as 1955, before turning to Combustioni plastiche ("combustive visual arts") which intensified from 1961 onwards. That same year, the concomitant research of Yves Klein, Otto Piene and Bernard Aubertin led to the creation of fire paintings. A destructive and creative force, fire fascinated these artists because of its symbolic power. Yves Klein, as a demiurge artist, was passionate about this element, as powerful as it is fleeting, which allowed him to capture in a poetic event the very essence of the life that his works bear the memory of: "My paintings are only the ashes of my art1. "

Inspired by a creative context that advocates a new beginning from scratch, Dadamaino pierces the canvas to the point of leaving only the edges, in a radical gesture of exploration of emptiness and immateriality. This quest for infinity expresses a reflection on the vastness of the cosmos, as suggested by Otto Piene's poetic invitation, which shows how the radicality of Fontana's gestures has been decisive for a whole new generation of artists: "When will we make a hole in the sky, Lucio Fontana4?"

These experiments echo the research of Italian artists Lucio Fontana and Dadamaino. Fontana, after having laid the foundations of an art "based on the unity of time and space2" as early as 1946, is the inventor of Buchi ("holes", 1949) and Tagli ("notches", 1958), philosophical expressions of a space open to infinity. "Me, I pierce, the infinite passes through there. [...] I have built, I have not destroyed3.

Yves Klein travaillant aux Peintures de Feu à la Plaine Saint Denis. Paris, Centre Pompidou-MNAM/CCI-Bibliothèque Kandinsky Fonds Harry Shunk et Shunk-Kender © Succession Yves Klein c/o Adagp, Paris, 2020 © Janos Kender © Shunk Harry Photo : © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Fonds Shunk et Kender

Yves Klein, « L’évolution de l’art vers l’immatériel. Conférence à la Sorbonne » (1959), repr. in Le dépassement…, op. cit., p. 133

Lucio Fontana, « Manifeste blanc », 1946, in Écrits de Lucio Fontana (Manifestes, textes, entretiens), Valérie DA COSTA (éd. et trad.), Dijon, Les Presses du réel,

2013, p. 140 3

Lucio Fontana, « Entretien avec Carla Lonzi », in Écrits de Lucio Fontana, op.cit., p. 109.

Otto Piene, « A Hole in the Sky », in Lucio Fontana. The Spatial Concept of Art, cat. exp., Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, 6 janvier-13 février 1966, Austin, University

of Texas Art Museum, 27 février-27 mars 1966 ; Buenos Aires, Centro de Artes Visuales, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 8 juillet-7 août 1966, Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, 1966, n. p

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

Yves Klein and Otto Piene

Otto Piene, Die Sonne brennt, 1966 © Adagp, Paris, 2020 Photo : © Kunstpalast - ARTOTHEK

Yves Klein, Monochrome bleu troué par le feu, (IKB 22), ca. 1957 Collection particulière © Succession Yves Klein c/o ADAGP, Paris, 2020 – Cliché : Archives Klein / ADAGP Images

Yves Klein and Otto Piene began their series of fire paintings simultaneously in the late 1950s. Even though they signed a friendly agreement intended to prevent any accusations of foul play, in any case, their approaches differed profoundly. Piene was interested in the vibrations of light produced by the heat of a flame, and the burning effects of oil and varnish, while Klein sought to capture the imprints of the passage of fire and to celebrate the power of this element. Piene handles the flame of his candle with extreme precision, while Klein offers a cathartic flame-throwing spectacle. These

sessions were carried out at the Gaz de France Test Centre at La Plaine-Saint-Denis, near Paris, in March and July 1961, after the discovery of a Swedish-made compressed cardboard that was more fire-resistant. The sooty stars of the Piene monochromes make use of a traditional symbolic and poetic association of fire in the sun. Klein, referring to Gaston Bachelard's La Psychanalyse de feu (1938) [The Psychoanalysis of Fire], produced abstract and sublimated images of a spiritual and mystical fire.

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

SECTION V: VOID THEATRES During his collaboration at the Gelsenkirchen opera-theatre building site, where between 1958 and 1959 he produced four monumental panels in IKB blue, Yves Klein discovered the exceptional qualities of pictorial sensitivity projected on a monumental scale. The artist's physical involvement in this in situ production resonates with the physicality at work in the Anthropometries sessions, also central to the gestures of Lucio Fontana, Saburō Murakami and Günther Uecker. The opening of the painting into an infinite space, at the heart of spatialist research, leads here to a performative dimension on a larger scale. The body finds itself projected into space - that of the work, its environment, and finally, the sky itself.

paint, but he must go without tricks, nor artifice, not by plane, parachute or rocket: he must go by himself [...]2. "

The central space of the exhibition, an elevated structure offering the public an overhanging viewpoint, formalises the desire for ascent. In the context of the conquest of space, the artists develop their own means of occupying celestial space in a peaceful manner: an immaterial film projected on a balloon (Gil J. Wolman), inflatable sculptures (Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Otto Piene, Jean Tinguely) and magnetic sculptures (Takis), an exhibition in the sky organised by Gutai, these light forms seem to be used to escape from "the slavery of gravity under whose yoke we live1. " The immateriality of these works, combined with the performative dimension of their realisation, takes on its most poetic and mystical character in Yves Klein's quest for levitation, who declares: "Today the space painter must actually go into space to

Yves Klein, Anthropométrie sans titre, (ANT 109), 1960 © Succession Yves Klein c/o Adagp, Paris, 2020 - Cliché : Adagp Images

Note d’Yves Klein, repr. in Le dépassement…, op. cit, p. 368.

Yves Klein, « Un homme dans l’espace », Dimanche 27 novembre. Le Journal d’un seul jour, repr. in Le dépassement…, op. cit., p. 182.

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

Yves Klein and Takis In April 1961, the Soviet Yuri Gagarin was the first man to enter orbit around the Earth. Sensing the impact of this event, in November 1960, Yves Klein and Takis both claimed to be the first to send a man into space. Klein performed his famous Jump into the Void, reproduced in the headlines of Sunday, 27th November. In the newspaper of one single day. Two days later, at the Iris Clert Gallery, Takis performed his show "The Impossible: A Man in Space" in which the poet Sinclair Beiles levitated thanks to the power of magnetic fields. Their simultaneous research into the forces of the invisible and gravity took on a spiritual and mystical approach for one of them, and scientific and philosophical for the other. Like the photographs of these actions, which are the only evidence of it, the work Passage by Saburō Murakami bears the stigmata of his dazzling passing through six paper screens. This performance, which anticipates the happening, can also be seen as a passage into the void, because "by piercing the paper partitions that traditionally separate spaces in Japanese homes, the artist denied form and surface and suggested the destruction caused by the war on Japanese architecture 1 ".

Yves Klein, Le Saut dans le Vide, Fontenay-aux-Roses, France, 23 octobre 1960 Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2014.R.20) © Succession Yves Klein c/o Adagp, Paris, 2020 Photographe : Shunk-Kender © J. Paul Getty Trust. 1

Ming Tiampo, « Remplir le vide : l’avant-garde japonaise après Hiroshima », in Vides. Une rétrospective, Laurent LE BON (dir.), cat. exp., Paris, Centre Pompidou,

Musée national d’art moderne, 25 février-23 mars 2009, Berne, Kunsthalle, 10 septembre-11 octobre 2009, Paris et Zurich, Éditions du Centre Pompidou et jrp|ringier, 2009, p. 435.

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

SECTION VI: AIR ARCHITECTURE

Upon his return from Gelsenkirchen in 1959, inspired by his large-scale work and his collaboration with Werner Ruhnau, Yves Klein developed the project of an Air Architecture. This immaterial architecture aimed to build the city of tomorrow from the natural elements of fire, air and water. His main research centred upon the roof of air, which was to replace the closed roof, this "shield that separates us from the sky, from the blue of the sky1" and which enables the protection of its inhabitants without creating dividing walls. Klein continued the development of this aerial architecture with Claude Parent, who produced the drawings. The inhabitants of this "immense cosmic house2" were to be freed from all constraints and devote themselves exclusively to leisure activities.

The collaboration between Klein and Parent gives substance to Fontana's desire to see a "fusion of artists and architects in the 'architecturespace3' relationship. Parallel to Klein's research, other artists were imagining utopian architectural projects: Gyula Kosice was designing plans for a hydrospace city floating at an altitude of more than 1,000 metres that used hydraulic energy as a building material, and Constant was working on the New Babylon, a city of suspended spaces whose inhabitants were also freed from work thanks to automation. These projects were part of a context of reconstruction and development of cities that was favourable to architectural utopias.

Yves Klein, Conférence à la Sorbonne « L’évolution de l’art vers l’immatériel », 3 juin 1959, repr. in Le dépassement…, op. cit., p. 149.

Gaston Bachelard, La Poétique de l’espace, chapitre II, section 6

Lucio Fontana, « Pourquoi je suis spatialiste », 1952, in Écrits de Lucio Fontana, op.cit., p.72

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

Yves Klein and Gyula Kosice

Yves Klein avec la collaboration de Claude Parent, Cité climatisée, toit d'air, murs de feu, lit d'air, 1961 © Succession Yves Klein c/o Adagp, Paris, [2020] - Cliché : Adagp Images

Gyula Kosice, Maqueta de la Ciudad Hidroespacial [Maquette de la ville hydrospatiale], 1947. Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne © Fundación Kosice, Buenos Aires Photo : © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. RMN-GP

These two architectural proposals, divergent in their artistic intentions, provide for the use of the energy of natural elements as building material. The air-conditioned city designed by Klein is essentially based on air: "You build with air immaterial materials. In the ground, with soil material materials - denser and heavier than the earth1. " The subsoil conceals a functional space where machines allow the proper functioning of outdoor living spaces. The nakedness of the inhabitants floating on the airbeds testifies to their freedom. In the hydro-spatial city of Kosice,

whose idea emerged as early as 1947 and took shape from 1964, the architecture is based on water and magnetism. The floating modules are organised in such a way as to encourage a free way of life, with the inhabitants being able to "read aloud the spectrum of the universe". The Klein and Kosice projects anticipate ecological concerns: the hydrospace city is a refuge from pollution; the aerial city of Klein aiming to "reclassify" certain regions, to recondition the air and to create new ecosystems.

Yves Klein, « L’aventure monochrome », L’habitation immatérielle, repr. in Le dépassement…, op. cit., p. 267-268

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

SECTION VII : COSMOGONIES In the White Manifesto, Lucio Fontana declared that "art nouveau draws its elements from nature". Even before the emergence of Land Art, a generation of artists integrated natural phenomena and forces into their work, flirting with chance, the unfinished, even the shapeless. This reappropriation of nature transcribes a cosmogonic and phenomenological vision of art, where forms and elements refer to a cosmic whole, which is expressed in its constant immediacy. The sharing of the world that Klein concluded during the summer of 1947, in Nice, with his artist friends, Claude Pascal and Armand Fernandez, the future Arman, testifies to a desire to appropriate the inappropriable: to Arman goes the earth and its riches, to Claude Pascal the air, and to Yves Klein, the painter of blue, the sky and its infinity. Later on, Tinguely would be given magnetism and Norbert Kricke water and light.

from the groups ZERO, NUL and Gutai on the harbour pier in Scheveningen, in the Netherlands, articulating rationality and sensoriality, reflecting the emergence of new attitudes.

In March 1960, in Cagnes-sur-Mer, Klein produced his first Naturemétries (as opposed to Anthropometries) or Cosmogonies, recording on sheets of paper the traces of plants impregnated with blue, or the passage of wind and rain, before fixing his signature on these "natural moments of being1". Hans Haacke also integrates water and air into his pieces, where natural phenomena intersect with social phenomena, while Heinz Mack is the painter of light. By exposing the pure IKB pigment on the floor, Klein focuses on the vibration of the colour blue, which "reminds one at most of the sea or the sky, the most abstract thing about tangible, living nature2". Outdoor monumental and collaborative projects, such as the exhibition Zero op Zee [ZERO on the Sea], conceived by artist Henk Peeters in 1965, which brought together artists

Yves Klein, Cosmogonie sans titre, (COS 13), 1961 © Succession Yves Klein c/o Adagp, Paris, [2020] - Cliché : Adagp Images

Yves Klein, « Le vrai devient réalité », ZERO, no 3, 1961, repr. in Le dépassement…, op. cit, p. 285

Yves Klein,« Discours à la Commission du théâtre de Gelsenkirchen » (1958), repr. in Le dépassement…, op. cit., p. 7

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

Heinz Mack Heinz Mack's Sahara-Projekt is a monumental project that took an experimental and innovative approach to the link between art and nature. As early as 1959, Mack, Piene and Kleinhad raised the possibility of organizing an exhibition of large sculptures in harmony with the dimensions of the landscape, in the Antarctic or the Sahara. "We were inspired by the hope of creating a MIRAGE by using art, of deploying in a vast natural and open space several light installations creating a spatial painting, in itself totally immaterial1" said Heinz Mack. The Sahara-Projekt, which Mack had imagined as early as 1958, was the subject of the third issue of the magazine ZERO in 1961. The "Artificial Garden" he designed consists of thirteen stages or "stations", the first of which consists of a group of stelae planted in the sand to reflect the vibrant light of the sun. True to the ideal of collaboration, Mack originally planned to incorporate works by his friends including Fontana, Castellani, Manzoni, Piene, Uecker, as well as Klein’s sponges, but the project was to take a more individualistic turn. The artist realised part of his dream when he went to the Tunisian desert in 1968 to install a forest of light stelae, an ephemeral artistic event documented in the film Tele-Mack.

Lothar Wolleh, Heinz Mack par Lothar Wolleh, vers 1972 © Lothar Wolleh Estate, Berlin

Heinz Mack, note biographique non datée, ZERO Foundation, Düsseldorf, mkp.ZERO.1.IV.Eigene Texte, Vorlass Heinz Mack.

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

SECTION VIII: COLOURS INHABITING SPACE Yves Klein and Sadamasa Motonaga had repeatedly expressed their desire to have their work performed outdoors. The occupation of public space was a theme dear to the artists of the Gutai group, who, as early as 1955, abandoned "the traditional concept of an enclosed exhibition space" in favour of "the vast world [...] with the infinite dome of the blue sky above1". The ethereal space of nature offered infinite visual arts possibilities that also fascinated Yves Klein. Characterised only by a date, a place name and a dimension inscribed below, the uniformly pastel surfaces of Klein's first monochromes, published in the portfolio Yves peintures in 1954, are reminiscent of "vedute" (views), atmospheric landscapes. The lithographs glued on paper appear soaked with the colourful climate of the city they are supposed to represent. For the artist, "colours are living beings, highly evolved individuals who integrate themselves into us, like everything else. Colours are the true inhabitants of space2." By choosing water as a binder, Motonaga also invites life to infiltrate his work. Clinging to the pine trees in Ashiya Park during the 2nd Outdoor Gutai Art Exhibition in the summer of 1956, the long membranes filled with coloured liquids remind us of cocoons, and the promise of the blossoming of colour. The tinted solutions, suspended in the air, are a challenge to gravity. For Klein, colour "bathes [...] in cosmic sensitivity3. " With their imperceptibly rounded edges and undulating surfaces, his monochromes with their indistinct contours create the sensation of a coloured nebula and recall the "marvellous rainbows4" that Lucio Fontana dreamed of making appear in the sky at the same epoch.

Sadamasa Motonaga, Work (Water) [Œuvre (Eau)], 1956/2020 Installation : eau, plastique, pigment, dimensions variables Courtesy The Estate of Sadamasa Motonaga © Motonaga Archive Research Institution Photo : © Moderna Museet Stockholm / Åsa Lundén

Jiro Yoshihara, « L’art gutai sur la scène », 1957, repr. in Japon des Avant-Gardes, op. cit., p. 299.

Yves Klein, « L’Aventure monochrome », 1re partie : Le vrai devient réalité ou pourquoi pas, repr. in Le dépassement… op. cit., p. 229.

Ibid., p. 228

Lucio Fontana, Spatialistes 2e manifeste, 1948, repr. in Écrits de Lucio Fontana, op. cit., p. 150.

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

SECTION IX: COSMIC VISIONS These motifs, symbols of eternity and purity, evoke space in all its dimensions, from the microscopic to the infinite. The manifesto of the ZERO group proclaimed in 1963: "ZERO is round. ZERO turns. ZERO is the moon. The sun is ZERO. " The works of Otto Piene, Günther Uecker and Liliane Lijn, with their moving lights, share the same cosmic vision and offer a meditation on the place of the human being in the universe. In a radical gesture, Yves Klein declared with Ci-gît l’espace [Here lies, space], the death of traditional art, to which Piero Manzoni, in his Socle du monde, (the world’s foundation) responded by inverting heaven and earth to transform our entire planet into a work of art. Through a reversal of perspective, the cosmos that had become accessible, penetrated the work and enriched it with new poetry, as reflected in Otto Piene's words: "In this sky, paradise is on earth1. "

The information brought back by Youri Gagarine upon his return from space in 1961 enchanted Yves Klein: he was right, the Earth is blue, an intense and deep blue. As early as 1957, when the Sputnik satellite was put into orbit, the "astronaut painter", as Arman was nicknamed, produced a series of blue globes, reflecting this premonitory vision. In 1961, Klein continued his series of Planetary Reliefs, consisting of casts of topographical maps that he had acquired from the National Geographic Institute and covered with his IKB blue, giving his vision of a blue planet seen from the sky, like fragments of immeasurable space. The context of the conquest of space and the upheavals it brought to the representation of space in the broadest sense fascinated a whole generation of artists who aspired to reconquer the sky with their artistic sensitivity as their only weapon. Their works evolved in a natural way towards circular, spherical, ovoidal forms. 1

Otto Piene, « Wege zum Paradies » (Chemins vers le paradis), ZERO, vol. 3, juillet 1961, n. p.

Otto Piene sky, just as we have left it to illuminate the sky with coloured signs and provoked but artificial devastating fires."

As early as 1955, Otto Piene experimented with light using screens and stencils, which led him to the first so-called "archaic" versions of his Light Ballets series, which he presented in 1959 at the Schmela Gallery in Düsseldorf. These manual projections evolved towards chromatic, mechanical and then automatic versions. Using sophisticated technology, Piene's installations grew in scale as far as enveloping the entire space of the spectator in the manner of the night sky: "My greatest dream is to project light into the immense night sky [...] - only airspace offers man almost unlimited freedom1. " Marked by his experience as a young soldier in anti-aircraft combats, Otto Piene explored the darkness of the cosmos in order to remove its terror. In the manner of a choreographer of light, Piene orchestrates an immaterial dance with the aim of healing a wounded sky: "We have left it to war to design a ballet of light for the night 1

Otto Piene, Lichtraum mit Mönchengladbach Wand [Pièce lumineuse avec mur de Mönchengladbach], 1963-2013 Otto Piene Estate. Courtesy Sprüth Magers, Berlin © ADAGP, Paris, 2020 © Sprueth Magers (Gallery) / Estate Otto Piene

Otto Piene, ibid., repr. in Antje Kramer, L’ Aventure allemande du Nouveau Réalisme, op. cit., p. 129.

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

4. CATALOGUE The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue that places Yves Klein's work in its historical context and puts into perspective the sources of inspiration and the permeability between his research and that of German, Italian and Japanese contemporaries.

Yves Klein and the aesthetics of the Japanese avant-garde around the notion of emptiness. Antje Kramer-Mallordy, lecturer at the University of Rennes 2, analyses the unifying role of exhibitions in the collaboration between Yves Klein and the ZERO movement. Frédéric Migayrou, Deputy Director of the Musée national d'art moderne in charge of industrial design, questions Yves Klein's emblematic Architecture de l'air, a project for the conquest of space through sensitivity, with regard to post-war architectural utopias.

Unpublished essays by art historians develop the main themes of the exhibition. Emma Lavigne, President of the Palais de Tokyo and curator of the exhibition, explores the performative dimension of Yves Klein's work in the light of the international scene. Luca Massimo Barbero, Director of the Giorgio Cini Foundation's Institute of Art History and associate curator of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, examines the central role of Lucio Fontana in the approach to space among artists of this period. Yuko Hasegawa, Artistic Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo (MOT), examines the relationship between

Among the authors who contribute their expertise to this book by analysing specific connections between the works of Yves Klein and some of his peers are Valérie Da Costa, Hélène Guenin, Noémi Joly, Giovanni Lista, Florence de Mèredieu, Aomi Okabe, Sophia Sotke and Dominique Stella.

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES EDITOR IN CHIEF: EMMA LAVIGNE ÉDITIONS DU CENTRE POMPIDOU-METZ RELEASE DATE: 8TH JULY 2020 224 PAGES ISBN: 978-2-35983-058-3 PRICE: € 39,00

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

5. LIST OF PRESENTED ARTISTS Bernard Aubertin Claude Bellegarde Alberto Burri Enrico Castellani Constant Dadamaino Lucio Fontana Hans Haacke Oskar Holweck Eikō Hosoe Fumio Kamei Akira Kanayama Yves Klein Gyula Kosice Yayoi Kusama Liliane Ljin Heinz Mack Piero Manzoni Sadamasa Montanaga Saburö Murakami Claude Parent Henk Peeters Otto Piene Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio Roberto Rossellini Rotraut Shözö Shimamoto Fujiko Shiraga Kazuo Shiraga Takis Jean Tinguely Günther Uecker Jef Verheyen Lothar Wolleh Gil J. Wolman

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

6. YOUNG PUBLIC AND ASSOCIATED PROGRAMMING LA CAPSULE 18.07 > 07.10 Jérôme Gelès WED. + SAT. + SUN. + PUBLIC HOLIDAYS From 2PM to 6PM THE LANDING OF GALERIE 1 Omnipresent in the thoughts and work of Yves Klein, the dream of flying is also omnipresent in the practice of Jérôme Gelès. Thwarting gravity, his works invite young and old alike to pursue Icarus's dream: to fly, thanks to human intelligence and mechanics. Thanks to the Capsule's activities, let yourself be carried away by lightness; come imagine building the flying machine that you have always secretly dreamed of! Free access on presentation of an exhibition ticket, without reservation (subject to availability) Additional hours during school holidays in Zone B: MON. + THU. + FRI. – From 2PM to 6PM

#LaCapsuleCPM

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

SONIC BLOSSOM 23.09 > 18.10.20 CONCERT Lee Mingwei (2013) WED. TO SUN. From 11AM to 17PM | Grande Nef | Free access on presentation of an admission ticket to the day's exhibitions For its tenth anniversary, the Centre PompidouMetz offers you a unique experience. At the heart of the exhibition The Sky as a Studio, an opera singer will propose a Schubert Lied to selected visitors, chosen at random, to interpret a Schubert Lied for them. This face-to-face encounter, a moment of musical intimacy as close as possible to the works of Yves Klein or Lucio Fontana, gives rise to sincere energy and deep emotions for the participants. Using simple gestures, Taiwanese-born artist Lee Mingwei creates collective experiences of caring and possibilities and considers himself a "creator of offerings". Drawing on his personal history, and mainly on his childhood memories, Lee Mingwei offers a moment of intimacy and trust, where giving and receiving become fundamental, even political gestures.

Lee Mingwei, Sonic Blossom, Centre Pompidou, Octobre 2018 Photographe Hervé Véronèse. Archives du Centre Pompidou Yves Klein, Grande Anthropophagie bleue, Hommage à Tennessee Williams (ANT 76), 1960 © Succession Yves Klein c/o ADAGP Paris, 2020

With the support of the Centre Culturel de Taïwan in Paris

OUTSIDE THE WALLS

manuscript by Yves Klein. Driven by the desire to make colour triumph in all the arts, Klein published in 1960 an unfinished scenario dating from 1954, adaptable to film or ballet, entitled La Guerre (de la ligne et de la couleur). [War – Line and Colour]. Mixing up theatre, dance and projections, this total art show is one of the most ambitious projects Klein ever imagined. Relaunching the debate that animated the painters of the Royal Academy in the 17th century, he declared colour superior to line and to drawing. The choreographers Petter Jacobsson and Thomas Caley, with the exceptional collaboration of the artist Tomás Saraceno, whose floating universe lies at the crossroads of art, architecture and science, propose a total and synesthetic experience combining the immateriality dear to Klein with the spatiality of bodies in movement.

WAR TUE. 09.02.20 DRESS REHEARSAL THU.11, FRI.12, SAT.13.02.20 PERFORMANCES CCN-BALLET DE LORRAINE Petter Jacobsson Set design: Tomas Saraceno (tbc) | Premiere: Opéra de Nancy

Produced by CCN - Ballet de Lorraine, as part of the "Associate Artist" scheme between CCN Ballet de Lorraine and Centre Pompidou-Metz.

On the occasion of the exhibition The Sky as a Studio. Yves Klein and his contemporaries. , Centre Pompidou-Metz joins forces with the CCN-Ballet de Lorraine for an original creation based on a

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

7. PARTNERS Centre Pompidou-Metz constitutes the first example of decentralisation of a great national cultural institution, Centre Pompidou, in partnership with the regional authorities. An autonomous institution, the Centre Pompidou-Metz benefits from the experience, skills and international renown of the Centre Pompidou. It shares with its elder the values of innovation, generosity pluridisciplinarity and openness to all audiences. Centre Pompidou-Metz produces temporary exhibitions based on loans from the collection of the Centre Pompidou, MusĂŠe national dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;art moderne, which is, with more than 120 000 works, the most important collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe and the second in the world. It also develops partnerships with museum institutions over the whole world. As an extension to its exhibitions, Centre Pompidou-Metz also proposes dance performances, concerts, cinema and conferences. It benefits from the support of Wendel, the founding sponsor.

With the participation of Vranken-Pommery Monopole. With the collaboration of the archives of Yves Klein In media partnership with

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

G R A N D M E C E N E D E L A C U LT U R E

WENDEL, FOUNDING SPONSOR OF THE CENTRE POMPIDOU-METZ Wendel has been involved with Centre Pompidou-Metz since its opening in 2010. Trough this patronage, Wendel has wanted to support an emblematic institution with a broad cultural influence. In acknowledgement of its long-standing commitment to cultural development, Wendel was awarded the title of "Grand Sponsor of Culture" in 2012. Wendel is one of Europe’s leading listed investment companies. It operates as a long-term investor and requires a commitment from shareholder which fosters trust, constant attention to innovation, sustainable development and promising diversification opportunities. Wendel excels in the selection of leading companies, such as those in which it currently owns a stake: Bureau Veritas, Constantia Flexibles, Crisis Prevention Institute, Cromolgy, IHS Towers, Stahl or Tsebo. Founded in 1704 in the Lorraine region, the Wendel Group expanded for 270 years in various activities, in particular in the steel industry, before becoming a long-term investor in the late 1970s. The Group is supported by its core family shareholder group, which is composed of more than one thousand shareholders of the Wendel family, combined to form the family company Wendel-Participations, which owns 39,1% of the Wendel group’s share capital. CONTACTS : Christine Anglade Pirzadeh + 33 (0) 1 42 85 63 24 c.angladepirzadeh@wendelgroup.com Caroline Decaux + 33 (0) 1 42 85 91 27 c.decaux@wendelgroup.com

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

8. IMAGES AVAILABLE FOR THE PRESS The pictures of artworks, among which the pictures listed hereafter, can be downloaded at the following url: centrepompidou-metz.fr/phototheque Username: presse Password: Pomp1d57

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

Charles Wilp, Yves Klein « La chambre du vide » [im Raum der Leere im Museum] Haus Lange, 1961 © Charles Wilp / BPK, Berlin © Succession Yves Klein c/o Adagp, Paris, 2020

Yves Klein, Monochrome bleu sans titre, (IKB 4), 1961 © Succession Yves Klein c/o Adagp, Paris, 2020 Cliché : Adagp Images

Yves Klein, Anthropophagie bleue, Hommage à Tennessee Williams, (ANT 76), 1960 : Photo : © Philippe Migeat - Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI /Dist. RMN-GP © Succession Yves Klein c/o ADAGP Paris, 2020

Kazuo Shiraga, Chizensei Kirenji [Le combattant chinois Du Xing dit Face de Démon], 1961 Wijnegem, Axel & May Vervoordt Foundation © The Estate of Kazuo Shiraga. Courtesy of Fergus McCaffrey, New York / St. Barth. © Jan Liégeois / courtesy Axel & May Vervoordt Foundation

Piero Manzoni, Achrome, 1959 Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne © Adagp, Paris, 2020 Photo : © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. RMN-GP

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

Yves Klein, Monochrome bleu troué par le feu, (IKB 22), ca. 1957 Collection particulière © Succession Yves Klein c/o ADAGP, Paris, 2020 – Cliché : Archives Klein / ADAGP Images

Yves Klein, Anthropométrie sans titre, (ANT 109), 1960 © Succession Yves Klein c/o Adagp, Paris, 2020 - Cliché : Adagp Images

Yves Klein avec la collaboration de Claude Parent, Cité climatisée, toit d'air, murs de feu, lit d'air, 1961 © Succession Yves Klein c/o Adagp, Paris, 2020 - Cliché : Adagp Images

Gyula Kosice, Maqueta de la Ciudad Hidroespacial [Maquette de la ville hydrospatiale], 1947 Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne © Fundación Kosice, Buenos Aires Photo : © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. RMN-GP

Sadamasa Motonaga, Work (Water) [Œuvre (Eau)], 1956/2020 Courtesy The Estate of Sadamasa Motonaga © The Estate of Sadamasa Motonaga. Courtesy of Fergus McCaffrey, New York / St. Barth © Moderna Museet Stockholm / Åsa Lundén

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

NOTES

THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

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THE SKY AS A STUDIO YVES KLEIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

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