Antropometría sin título (ANT 56) (Untitled Anthropometry [ANT 56])

Yves Klein began to work with pure colours at the end of the 1940s and in 1956 he inaugurated in Paris the exhibition Yves: propositions monochromes. These monochrome works with variations perceptible only in the texture of the support medium include some of the Klein works in the Museo Reina Sofía collection: Monochrome Pink, Monogold and Monochrome Blue, which involve the use of colour treated as an open space and also a break with the pictorial convention of paintings. Klein uses mostly ultramarine blue, a pigment that the artist patented under the brand IKB (International Klein Blue). Antropometría sin título (ANT 56) (Anthropometry: Untitled [ANT 56]) belongs to the series Anthropometries in which the artist practices the technique known as pinceau vivant (living paintbrush), which consists of covering models with blue pigment who then roll over the canvas, leaving behind, as in gesture writing, the imprint of their bodies. These paintings by Klein are the effect of performances, events and installations – experimentation quite distant from the modern visual conventions that announce later developments perceptible in conceptual art and in Fluxus. Klein, with his anthropometries, represents the intersection occurring in European art between 1957 and 1962, where we find strategies swinging between body work, ready-made art and the spectacle.