In London I worked secretively for about a year, to earn my living, in the Old Brompton Road framing shop of one of my father’s friends, Robert Savage. It was there that in assisting in the preparation of glues, colors, varnishes, and gildings that I first came near raw materials and handling them in bulk. In ap- plying coat after coat on frame between sanding, taking great pains to avoid any undesired imperfection or irregularity, I first glimpsed a beautiful white distemper, clean and dry. Then, after the second coat, it was a very pale reddish gray or a translucent pink. It was necessary to constantly examine the surface closely, from about five to six centimeters away, to inspect it in detail (my vision was perfectly normal), and to see if it was consistent- ly silken, smooth, or deliberately rough.

And then, the gold! Those leaves literally fly away with the slightest movement of air and have to be caught in flight with a knife in one hand and the gilders cushion in the other. The leafs are delicately placed on the surface to be gilded, prepared with a base and moistened with gelatinous water before hand. What material! What better schooling with respect to pictorial mat- ter! At last, the burnishing with agatha stone, etc.

It was during this year at the SAVAGE studio that I perceived the illumination of matter as a profoundly physical quality. 

Yves Klein, excerpt from The monochrome adventure de l'aventure monochrome, 1960


First, hardly two months ago, at Anvers, I was invited to ex- hibit with a group of artists made up of [Pol] Bury, [Jean] Tingue- ly, [Dieter] Rot, [Robert] Breer, [Heinz] Mack, [Bruno] Munari, [Daniel] Spoerri, [Otto] Piene, and [Rafael] Soto. I traveled to An- vers and instead of installing a painting or whatever tangible and visible object in the space reserved for me in the Hessenhuis exhibit hall, I loudly pronounced to the public these words bor- rowed from Gaston Bachelard during the opening reception:

First there is nothing, then there is a deep nothing, then there is a blue
The Belgian organizer of this exposition then asks me where my work could be found. I reply, Right here, where I am speaking – And what is the price of this work? – One kilo of gold, one kilo of pure gold will be acceptable for me.

Why these extravagant conditions instead of a normal price represented simply by a sum of money? Because, for the pictorial sensibility of the first matter, adapted and stabilized by me and pronounced in these few words upon my arrival, which made the blood of this spatial sensibility flow, one cannot demand money. The blood of sensibility is blue, says Shelley, and this is precisely my opinion. The price of blue blood cannot in any instance be money. It must be gold. And then, as we shall see later, in the analysis of the waking dream of Doctor Robert Desoille, blue, gold, and pink are of the same nature. On the level of these three it is an honest exchange.

Yves Klein, excerpt from the Conférence at the Sorbonne, 1959