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Lot Essay
This work is registered in the Yves Klein Archive under the archive
number SE 297.
'In working on my pictures in my studio, I sometimes used sponges. They became blue very quickly, obviously! One day I noticed the beauty of the blue in the sponge; at once this working tool became raw material for me. It is that extraordinary faculty of the sponge to become impregnated with whatever may be fluid that seduced me. Thanks to the sponges - raw living matter - I was going to be able to make portraits of the observers of my monochromes, who, after having seen, after having voyaged in the blue of my pictures, return totally impregnated in sensibility, as are the sponges.'
(Yves Klein in 1958, cited in Yves Klein 1928-1962: A Retrospective, exh.cat., Institute for the Arts, Rice University, Houston 1982, p. 111)
A sensational constellation of organic architecture saturated in Yves Klein's instantly recognizable 'International Klein Blue' pigment, Sculpture éponge bleue sans titre (SE 297) epitomizes Klein's art of immateriality.
First exhibited in Paris in 1959, the Sculptures éponges formed a forest of sponges impregnated with immaterial colour. Both the intense aesthetic and incomparable mystical experience of Sculpture éponge bleue sans titre (SE 297) makes this sculpture impossible to emulate.
Held aloft by an elegant stem, this biomorphic sculpture is exceptional for its intricacy of composition. The sheer power of the IKB pigment unifies the work so that the topography of the surface is not always discernible as the spellbinding blue intermittently overcomes silhouette and contour. The labyrinths within the sponges create a scheme of light and shadow and the potency of Klein's blue seems to fill these void matrices with a coloristic energy independent of the physical form.
number SE 297.
'In working on my pictures in my studio, I sometimes used sponges. They became blue very quickly, obviously! One day I noticed the beauty of the blue in the sponge; at once this working tool became raw material for me. It is that extraordinary faculty of the sponge to become impregnated with whatever may be fluid that seduced me. Thanks to the sponges - raw living matter - I was going to be able to make portraits of the observers of my monochromes, who, after having seen, after having voyaged in the blue of my pictures, return totally impregnated in sensibility, as are the sponges.'
(Yves Klein in 1958, cited in Yves Klein 1928-1962: A Retrospective, exh.cat., Institute for the Arts, Rice University, Houston 1982, p. 111)
A sensational constellation of organic architecture saturated in Yves Klein's instantly recognizable 'International Klein Blue' pigment, Sculpture éponge bleue sans titre (SE 297) epitomizes Klein's art of immateriality.
First exhibited in Paris in 1959, the Sculptures éponges formed a forest of sponges impregnated with immaterial colour. Both the intense aesthetic and incomparable mystical experience of Sculpture éponge bleue sans titre (SE 297) makes this sculpture impossible to emulate.
Held aloft by an elegant stem, this biomorphic sculpture is exceptional for its intricacy of composition. The sheer power of the IKB pigment unifies the work so that the topography of the surface is not always discernible as the spellbinding blue intermittently overcomes silhouette and contour. The labyrinths within the sponges create a scheme of light and shadow and the potency of Klein's blue seems to fill these void matrices with a coloristic energy independent of the physical form.