Yves Klein

Filmed in the 1970s with the art critic Otto Hahn, this film is the only visual document which brings together the thirteen Nouveaux Réalistes who participated in the artistic movement created by critic Pierre Restany in 1960 and including the text of the declaration collective was signed by Yves Klein in nine copies. Each of the artists appropriates a piece of land from the civilization of waste: from Arman the accumulations, from César the compressions of scrap metal, from Jean Tinguely the rusty machines, from Ramond Hains the torn posters.

Director Francois Levy-Kuentz's film uses previously unreleased archival material, such as Klein's personal films, to capture the artist's astonishing career, from its beginning in 1954 to his death in 1962. In those eight short years, Klein turned the modern art world upside down.

In the performance piece, Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle (Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility) 1959-62, he offered empty spaces in the city in exchange for gold. He wanted his buyers to experience The Void by selling them empty space. In his view this experience could only be paid for in the purest material: gold. In exchange, he gave a certificate of ownership to the buyer. As the second part of the piece, performed on the Seine with an Art critic in attendance, if the buyer agreed to set fire to the certificate, Klein would throw half the gold into the river, in order to restore the "natural order" that he had unbalanced by selling the empty space (that was now not "empty" anymore). He used the other half of the gold to create a series of gold-leafed works, which, along with a series of pink monochromes, began to augment his blue monochromes toward the end of his life.

In the performance piece, Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle (Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility) 1959-62, he offered empty spaces in the city in exchange for gold. He wanted his buyers to experience The Void by selling them empty space. In his view this experience could only be paid for in the purest material: gold. In exchange, he gave a certificate of ownership to the buyer. As the second part of the piece, performed on the Seine with an Art critic in attendance, if the buyer agreed to set fire to the certificate, Klein would throw half the gold into the river, in order to restore the "natural order" that he had unbalanced by selling the empty space (that was now not "empty" anymore). He used the other half of the gold to create a series of gold-leafed works, which, along with a series of pink monochromes, began to augment his blue monochromes toward the end of his life.