Yves Klein

Yves Klein was a French artist who lived from 1928 to 1962, a leading figure of the Nouveau realisme movement and a pioneer of conceptual and performance art. He is best known for developing and patenting International Klein Blue, a saturated ultramarine pigment used across a series of monochrome paintings, and for works such as the Anthropometries, made by pressing paint-covered nude models onto canvas, and the staged photograph Leap into the Void. He died of a heart attack at thirty-four, shortly after his most notorious exhibition, but is regarded as one of the most influential artists of the postwar era.