Chronology:
1928: Yves Klein was born on April 28 in Nice. His father, Fred Klein, Dutch of Indonesian extraction, was a figurative painter. His mother, née Marie Raymond from an Alpes-Maritimes family, was a well-known abstract painter.
1928-1946: Yves Klein follows his parents as they moved between their various residences. The Kleins livedin Paris but spend every summer at Cagnes-sur-Mer, where Marie Raymond’s sister Rose Raymond lives. Yves literally adored his aunt, who constantly doted on, assisted, and supported him. From the summer of 1939 until 1943, the Kleins live in Cagnes-sur-Mer, situated in the non-occupied zone.
1947: In the summer, Klein meets Claude Pascal and Armand Fernandez. United by their enthusiasm for physical exercise, all three yearned for the "adventure" of travel, creation and spirituality.
1947-1948: Yves Klein puts together a project for a Monotone-Silence Symphony, a musical composition of a single tone — a work which was to sound what the monochrome was to painting.
1948: During the summer of 1948, Yves Klein tours Italy, visiting Genoa, Portofino, Pisa, Rome, Capri, and Naples.
In November 1948, he leaves for eleven months of military service in Germany.
1949: In late 1949, Claude Pascal and Yves Klein temporarily move to London where they pursue their judo activities. Yves finds work with the framemaker Robert Savage, who had worked on Fred Klein’s London exhibition in 1946. Yves does several monochromes on paper and cardboard, using pastel and gouache. His stint at Savage’s brings rigor into his art. Klein also works on gold-leaf gilding.
1951: On February 3, Yves Klein leaves for Madrid to study Spanish. Initially, Claude Pascal and Yves had planned an initiatory round-the-world tour, but health problems made it impossible for Pascal to take part.
1952: During the summer, he makes contacts in Japan, and, with help from his aunt, sails for Yokohama, where he arrived on September 23. Shortly afterwards he moves to Tokyo. He spends fifteen months in Japan, dividing his time between the Institute and the French lessons which he gave to American and Japanese students.
1954: Klein publishes Yves Peintures and Haguenault Peintures. These two collections of monochromes are put together and published in Fernando Franco de Sarabia’s engraving studios in Jaen, in the Madrid area. Pascal Claude’s preface was made up of black lines instead of text. The ten color plates consisted of single-colored rectangles, cut out in paper and accompanied by an indication of their size in millimeters. Each plate indicated a different place of creation: Madrid, Nice, Tokyo, Paris. In Haguenault Peintures, mention was also made of collections. These two works constitute Yves’ first public gesture. Yves Peintures and Haguenault Peintures were artworks by means of which Klein raises the question of illusion in art.
1955: The first public exhibition of Yves Peintures is held at the Club des Solitaires, in the private salons of the Lacoste publishing house. Yves exhibits the variously colored monochromes he had done, revealing his intentions in a text given to visitors to the exhibition. Yves Klein’s theoretical dimension is already evident in this first show. The decisive meeting with Pierre Restany at the Club des Solitaires is to be a crucial element in both Yves Kleins’ and Pierre Restany’s careers.
1956: The exhibition Yves, Propositions Monochromes, is held at the Colette Allendy gallery, 67, rue de l’Assomption, in Paris. At the opening, Klein met Marcel Barillon de Murat, Knight of the Order of the Archers of Saint Sebastian, who invited him to join them. On March 11, Yves was dubbed knight of the Order of the Archers of Saint Sebastian in the Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs church in Paris. He adopts the motto: "For color! Against the line and drawing!"
Klein participates in the 1st Festival of Avant-Garde Art, presented at the Cité Radieuse of Le Corbusier in Marseille. He presents a Red Monochrome.
1957: Marks the beginning of the Blue Period.
Klein exhibits Proposte monocrome, epoca blu, at the Apollinaire gallery in Milan. Eleven works of identical format (78 x 56 cm), uniformly painted in ultramarine blue, were hung by a system of brackets at a distance of 20 cm from the wall, saturating the limited space of the small gallery. Because the blue panels were not framed, the color covered the outside edges of the chassis. For the first time, Klein presented an entire room of blue monochromes, one of which was purchased by Lucio Fontana.
At Iris Clert’s, Yves presents the Monochrome Propositions as he had shown them in Milan. The advent of the Blue Period was celebrated by the release of 1,001 blue balloons into the Paris sky during the inauguration. Klein referred to the gesture as a Sculpture aérostatique (Aerostatic Sculpture).
1958: Klein is commissioned to decorate the new Gelsenkirchen Opera House. The construction work would last fourteen months. He would meet Norbert Kricke, Paul Dierkes, Robert Adams, Jean Tinguely, the whole project being overseen by the architect Werner Ruhnau. It was at this time that he became fully aware of the sensible potential of sponges impregnated with blue pigment. In 1957, he had already presented several impregnated sponges at his exhibition at Colette Allendy’s.
Klein also first experiments with the "living brushes" technique in Robert Godet’s apartment on Ile Saint-Louis in Paris. In the course of the evening, Yves covered in blue paint the naked body of a young woman, who, through a series of rotating movements, left her bodily prints on a sheet of paper set on the floor, until the support was fully saturated. The result was a blue monochrome.
1959: Klein gives a lecture at the Sorbonne entitled L’évolution de l’art vers l’immatériel (Art’s Evolution Toward the Immaterial). Klein’s talk was followed by a talk by Werner Ruhnau.
Klein takes part in the Works in Three Dimensions exhibition at Leo Castelli gallery in New York, with Chamberlain, Folett, Giles, Johns, Kohn, Marisol, Rauschenberg, and Scarpitta.
Klein also publishes Le Dépassement de la problématique de l’art (Overcoming the Problematic of Art) in Belgium (La Louvière: Editions de Montbliart).
1960: Klein does the Monogolds between 1960 and 1961, integrating fine gold — both a precious and a symbolic material — into their composition. Certain Monogolds bring together series of rectangles assembled into grids; others are made up of mobile gold leaves affixed to a panel covered over in burnished gold, which quiver at the slightest breath; still others are concave reliefs of which the covering sheets of gold are painstakingly polished until they take on a genuine power of reflection.
At his home, in the presence of Pierre Restany, Klein also does imprints of Rotraut and Jacqueline who pressed the blue stamp of their bodies onto a large sheet of white paper fastened to the wall. The participants named the work Célébration d’une nouvelle Ere anthropométrique (Celebration of a New Anthropometric Period). With these imprints inscribed on a support, Klein sought to capture the marks of fleeting "states-moments of flesh."
Continuing on this idea, Klein organizes Anthropométries de l’Epoque bleue (Anthropometries of the Blue Period), at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art, 253, rue Saint-Honoré in Paris. While the Monotone Symphony was being performed, Klein had three nude models cover themselves in blue paint and affix their body prints on the white papers, laid out on the gallery walls and floor. A complex body language, staged by Klein himself, brought the figures to life in a sort of strange ballet, in which the actresses rolled and dragged their hands on the ground, before the audience’s eyes. The formally dressed audience, made up of numerous artists, collectors, and critics, was subsequently invited to take part in a general discussion, in which Georges Mathieu and Pierre Restany participated.
Klein also takes the steps to register the formula for the blue he had developed under the name International Klein Blue (IKB) and obtains a patent. Yves Klein’s formula included a certain amount "Rhodopas MA," made up of ethyl alcohol and ethyl acetate. By varying the concentration of the pigment and type of solvent, the paint could be applied with a brush, roller, or spray gun.
In October, Klein performs the piece Le Saut dans le vide (The Leap into the Void), at 3, rue Gentil-Bernard in Fontenay-aux-Roses. Photographed by Harry Shunk and John Kender, who took a number of different shots, Klein leaps from a building top. A rehearsal of the "leap" had already taken place on January 12 at Colette Allendy’s, rue de l’Assomption, in Paris.
1961: The exhibition Yves Klein: Monochrome und Feuer (Yves Klein: Monochrome and Fire) is held at the Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld, Germany, at the initiative of Doctor Paul Wember, director of the Krefeld Museum. It is Yves Klein’s largest retrospective during his lifetime.
In July, Klein stages anthropometry sessions in Paris which were filmed by Paolo Vavera, intended for Gualterio Jacopetti’s film, Mondo Cane, to be screened the following year at the Cannes Film Festival.
1962: On Sunday, January 21, 1962, Klein and Rotraut Uecker were married at the Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs church in Paris. Every aspect of the ceremony was meticulously orchestrated by Klein himself, with true concern for ritual.
On May 12, 1962, Klein attends the screening of Mondo Cane at the Cannes Film Festival. He left utterly humiliated by the portrait done of him, which completely distorted his work. The same evening, Yves showed the early signs of his first heart attack.
On June 6, 1962, Klein dies at his home, 14, rue Campagne-Première, in Paris. His son, Yves, was born in August in Nice.