A street in Fontenay-aux-Roses, lined with detached houses. From the top of a wall, a man leaps into the void. A cyclist, indifferent, moves away. The man is Yves Klein. An incredible image that has become an icon of twentieth-century art, this photograph was composed by the artist for the cover of Dimanche, a single-issue daily (27 November 1960) designed to counter the critics and clarify his positions. In it, Klein combines various texts on his transcendence of art and the theatre of the void.

Titled Un homme dans l'espace (A Man in Space), the photograph has a simple caption conceived as a slogan: "Le peintre de l'espace se jette dans le vide" (The painter of space throws himself into the void). The gesture is heroic, sublime and poetic. A man defies the laws of nature, the better to prove that space and emptiness are his kingdom.

As for the technical realisation, it was complex. In the street where a former judo club once stood, Klein leapt from a pillar towards a tarpaulin held by his judo friends. It took five attempts. In the last few, the artist performed the bird kata, or more precisely the eagle kata. Far from falling, he seemed to take flight towards infinity. Two photographers, Harry Shunk and Janos Kender, immortalised the scene before capturing the street, this time empty. This famous work is the result of a skilful photomontage. 

But th" Leap into the void" also marked an essential turning point in Klein's life: he announced that he was giving up judo for good, to devote himself solely to his art. In the 1970s, reproductions circulated intensively, and internationally too. His performative and absolute nature fascinated, to the point of sparking a number of artistic vocations, from John Baldessari to Paul McCarthy and Chris Burden.

extract from the special edition "Yves Klein Intime", published by Connaissance des arts to coincide with the exhibition at the Hôtel de Caumont in Aix-en-Provence in 2022.