Yves Klein, “People Begin to Fly (ANT 96),” 1961. The Menil Collection, Houston. © 2010...

“Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers,” on view at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, is the first major retrospective of the Yves Klein’s work in the United States since 1982. He was one of the 20th century’s most influential artists.
The retrospective, consisting of 200 works, explores the full range of the artist’s body of work and offers an essential overview and examination of a career that marked a key transition in twentieth-century art.
The exhibition features examples from all of Klein’s major series, from his iconic blue monochromes and Anthropometries to sponge reliefs, Fire Paintings, “air architecture” projects, Cosmogonies and planetary reliefs as well as many works that have rarely been on view. The retrospective also aims to shed light on the artist’s creative process through his drawings, photographs, letters and films.
Among Klein’s best-known works are the Anthropometries, begun in 1958. Under the artist’s direction, nude female models were smeared with IKB paint and used as “living brushes” to make body prints on prepared sheets of paper.
Seven works from this series are on view, including “People Begin to Fly” (1961) from The Menil Collection and “Untitled Anthropometry” (1960) from the Hirshhorn’s collection, which features the bodies of Klein and his future wife Rotraut Uecker.
The exhibition is co-organized by the Hirshhorn and the Walker Art Center and developed in full collaboration with the Yves Klein Archives in Paris, and co-curated by the Hirshhorn’s deputy director and chief curator Kerry Brougher and Dia Art Foundation director Philippe Vergne.- CF
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden- Yves Klein: 'With the Void, Full Powers' - May 20 to September 12, 2010

Published 22.05.2010