Art of the Year - 1962

The 1960’s was one of the most important decades in 20th-century art. Styles and movements that arose during this time include Pop Art, Op Art, Minimalism, Conceptual Art, Performance Art and Arte Povera among countless other styles and movements.

Venus Bleue, Yves Klein, IKB pigment and synthetic resin on plaster, 1962.

Yves Klein is best known for his trademark ultramarine pigment, which he patented as International Klein Blue in 1961. “Blue…is beyond dimensions, whereas the other colors are not,” he said. “All colors arouse specific ideas, while blue suggests at most the sea and the sky; and they, after all, are in actual, visible nature what is most abstract.” Here, in Venus Bleue, Klein applies his signature IKB pigment to a plaster cast of the famous Venus de Milo sculpture, pushing monochrome into the three-dimensional field and establishing a relationship between the infinite cosmos and the human form. By appropriating a famous Greek sculpture and painting it IKB, Klein gives the dated masterpiece a kitsch, commercial appeal, making it a precursor to Pop Art.