• Yves Klein : Propositions monochromes

Exhibition, 10 May 1957 - 25 May 1957

Yves Klein : Propositions monochromes

Galerie Iris Clert, Paris, France

"For several years I have thus pursued this adventure, this pictorial experiment based upon the sensorial, sensible, and the plastic resources of pure color, which is to say, of color presented as such, offered in and for itself to the readers.
These monochrome propositions, so named by Pierre RES-TANY because their material presentation makes them true supports of color (before I simply called them paintings), have preserved the objective aspect of traditional painting.
They are panels of wood or hardboard in varying formats (format and chromatic value being in general unconnected) whose surface has been covered with a very fine and tightly-stretched canvas. It is this canvas that is destined to receive the color, after meticulous preparation. A color whose tone, once fixed after diverse pigments are mixed together, is uniform."
Yves Klein, excerpt from « The Monochrome Adventure: the monochrome epic », 1960 ca., Overcoming the problematics of Art -The writings of Yves Klein, Spring Publications, 2007