One of the last century's most influential artists, Yves Klein (1928-1962) took the European art scene by slorm in a prolific career that lasted only from 1954 to 1962, when he suffered a heart
attack at the age of 34. He was an innovator who embraced painting, sculpture, performance, photography, music, theater, film, architecture, and theoretical writing. Self-identified as "the
painter of space," Klein sought to achieve immaterial spirituality through pure color (primarily an ultramarine blue of his own invention---international Klein Blue) and even went so far as to
present white galleries emplied of all artworks for his renowned 1958 exhibition of "the Void." His diverse ocuvre respresents a pivotal trnsition from modern art's concern with the material
object of contemporary notions of the conceptual nature of art.
Yves Klein: with the Void, Full Powers is published to accompany the first major retrospective of the artist's work in the United States in nearly 30 years. It includes examples from all of
Klein's major series, including his Anthropometries, Cosmogonies, Fire Paintings, planetary reliefs, and blue monochromes, as well as selections of his lesser-known gold and pink monochromes,
body and sponge reliefs, "air architecture," and immaterial works. I ssays by curators Kerry Brougher and Philippe Vergne, Klein Scholar Klaus Ottmann, art historian Kaira Cabanas, and
curatorial fellow Andria Hickey, as well as archival materials and translations of his published and unpublished writings offer insights into Klein's artistic endeavors and process.
