28 April 1928, Nice, France -

6 June 1963, Paris, France

Yves Klein was an important figure in post-war European art, who tragically died young at the age of 34 from a heart attack. He was a leading member of the French Nouveau Realism artistic movement founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany, other members of which included Arman, Raysse, Spoerri, and Jean Tinguely.

Both his parents were artists, and Klein started to paint in the late 1940s and formulated his first monochrome theories. His early works were in orange, yellow, pink and green, but from 1957 he worked primarily in blue and especially in IKB (International Klein Blue) that he developed to have the same colour brightness and intensity as dry pigments