(Nice 1928–1962 Paris) Epogen, blue, blue pigment, synthetic resin and natural sponge on metal pole with plinth, unique example, 20 cm (height including plinth and metal pole) x 6 x 10 cm, (plinth) sponge approx. 7 x 6 x 5 cm, in plexiglas box, (PS)

The work has been registered by the Archive Yves Klein under the no. SE 253.

Provenance:
Sfeir-Semmler Gallery, Hamburg

In 1957 during his exhibition at the Colette Allendy gallery, Klein had painted a layer of pure blue pigment on an area of the floor. He wished nothing to detract from the intensity of its radiation, for the binding agent, used to fix the granules of colour to a medium, always changes their original quality. With the aid of his supplier Edouard Adam, the artist had developed a formula for a synthetic resin which reduced the captivating shine of the pure pigment less than oil. This famous episode provided the occasion for mythological embellishments, but despite a persistent legend, the International Klein Bleu (IKB) really was never protected by patents”. (p.87)
Yves Klein’s posit was that the colour should saturate the space. Which object could better illustrate this philosophy than the sponge?!
Yet Yves Klein goes so far as to lend the observer themselves the ability of a sponge, one which soaks up “everything fluid”…. “Thanks to the sponges, this wild, living material, I can make portraits of the viewers of my monochrome, who, after seeing and exploring the blue of my pictures, return like sponges fully soaked with sensibility.” “The sponge and the metaphor of saturation presuppose one another…. More poet than scientist, more Sophist than philosopher, Klein attempts to draw us along his path into a universe in which fiction is the only route to truth and beauty.” (p.91ff)
Elsewhere we read, “I think I can say: my pictures represent poetic events. Or rather: they are immobile, silent and static witnesses to the essence of movement and a life in freedom, which is the flame of poetry in a visual moment.” In this context Klein uses the concept of “impregnation, with which he wishes to explain how an “unspeakably poetic moment” is absorbed into the medium of paint…” (p.89)
(Denys Riout: Imprägnationen: Szenarios und Szenografien, in: exhibition catalogue Yves Klein, Die blaue Revolution, Mumok Vienna 2007, p. 86–101)