Yves Klein, Untitled Blue Monochrome, (IKB 100), 1956 Dry pigment and synthetic resin on gauze mounted on panel

The blue Monochrome is for Yves Klein a technical challenge and a metaphysical experience. It is an outcome. A revolt against the drawing, against the line, led him towards the paint. And especially towards the monochrome, which is the purest state of the color. To the point that he takes even for artist's name "Yves the Monochrome" and to the point that he gives himself for slogan of knight of Saint Sébastien: "for the color, against the line and the drawing."

The certainty is anchored well: " Never using the line, one has been able to create in painting a fourth, fifth, or whatever other dimension – only color can attempt to succeed in this exploit. ", he writes.

As early as 1946, according to him, when he was eighteen, the artist strove to unravel the secrets of color. Through concrete examples: paper cut, orange, green, blue, pink paint ... And through his sensory experience of space like the one that led him to sign the sky, he gradually forged a truth "

Color, on the other hand, is the natural and human measure; it bathes in a cosmic sensibility. (...) Colors alone inhabit space, whereas the line only travels through it and furrows it. The line travels through infinity, whereas color is infinity. Through color I experience total identification with space; I am truly free.. "

But even more, blue enjoys a special status: " Blue has no dimensions. It is beyond dimensions, while the other colors have some." His blue will be the IKB, the International Klein Blue. He finally developed in 1960 his formula of pigments and synthetic resin, which he filed the patent May 13 at the French National Institute of Industrial Property in the envelope Soleau No. 63471.

Jacques Bouzerand (1939-2014) was a journalist and contemporary art specialist