Of all the colors perceived by the human eye, few capture the heart and mind like blue. Maria Papova writes in The Marginalists that this is "the elemental tone of our planet." It is the color of the sky and the unreal color of the water. It is the color of flowers, birds and butterflies. The color blue, Papava continues, "appears in our literature as something larger than a mere phenomenon of color - a symbol, a state of being, the foothold of the most lyrical and transcendental heights of imagination."
"We like to think of the color blue," Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said in his color theory , “not because it’s moving towards us, but because it’s attracting us.”
French philosopher Gaston Bachelard said: “First there is nothing, then there is the depth of nothingness, then there is the color blue.”
These later words inspired a painter named Yves Klein. Klein was born on April 28, 1928 in Nice, France. He moved to Tokyo in 1952, where he studied judo at the Kodokan Judo Academy. He returned to France after earning his black belt, at a time when few people had heard a word about judo, and his expertise in the human side of hip-throwing people Chuck Norris style was of little self-defense value in a room. He painted throughout his life, but this was when he began to take a career in art seriously.
Soon after, Klein became a well-known and celebrated artist in Paris. In November 1954, he published his first book, Yves Peintures . The book is a catalog of vivid monochromatic colors inspired by Klein's life in various cities throughout his youth. In Yves Klein's mind, Toyko's color was a pastel shade of pink. London is blue. Paris is both neon orange and dull gray. After the publication of his book, Klein staged a painting exhibition in Paris called "The Monochromatic Proposition" . The paintings are minimalist at best, a series of canvases evenly covered in red, pink, yellow, orange and blue paint.