Yves Klein (French, 1928-1962). "Suite de quatre timbres bleus [four works]". IKB pigment on postage stamps. 1957-1959. Fine condition. Provenance: The stamps were originally a gift of the artist to the head of the design department for printed matter and catalogs for the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden in the late fifties and early sixties. Bengtsson Fine Art, Sweden, acquired them from this employee and they then were purchased at artnet.com. Blocks of four Klein Timbre Bleu stamps are rare. The auction record is $13,820 (€10,500) at Cornette De Saint Cyr, Paris, 12/17/2012, lot #163. Individual stamps have sold at auction as high as $11,930 (€9,000) (Piasa, Paris, 01/21/2014, lot #94). Effectively Yves Klein paintings in miniature, these stamps are from a series Klein made in 1957 by painting blocks of blank stamps with what was to become his signature, the patented blue pigment officially registered as IKB, or "International Klein Blue". The blue stamps were created for mailing invitations to the opening of two pivotal exhibitions, in May 1957, at the Galerie Iris Clert Gallery and the Galerie Colette Allendy Gallery, both in Paris. The postal authorities were cajoled by Klein into accepting the stamps as if they were actual postage stamps printed by the French government, and they delivered all of the invitations. Klein's handmade blue stamps thus formed an important part of the "performance" that every Yves Klein gallery opening entailed (in addition to being a venue, in the conventional sense, for introducing Klein's latest work to the public). Klein continued to use the stamps for two years following their 1957 introduction. Image copyright © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Image size: 1 15/16 x 1 5/8 in. (49 x 41 mm). [29279] |6000| {R100} (TL1) rzzz~izzz