이 사진집은 레바논 접경지역 페니키아라는 가상의 나라에서 오랫동안 거주하며 작업해온 사진작가의 카탈로그 레조네입니다. 이 책은 개인적인 경험과 견해의 조합을 포함하며, 사진가의 기억을 그들이 살고 싶었던 기억과 연결시키려는 시도를 보여줍니다.
"Between 1957 and 1962, the year of his premature death, Yves Klein had a considerable number of exchanges with artists and institutions in the young Federal Republic of Germany. He spent several months in the Rhineland – in Düsseldorf or Gelsenkirchen – preparing exhibitions and creating new works on site. If we consider only his Sponge Reliefs, his Air Architecture project or his Fire Paintings, it becomes clear that many of his visual and conceptual innovations were linked to his experiences over the Rhine, amongst which his monumental project for the Foyer of the Gelsenkirchen Opera House – in collaboration with artists from France, Switzerland and Germany –, perceived by Klein as the creation of a “European situation”.
Far from the saturated and impenetrable Parisian scene, the painter – who nicknamed himself “Yves the Monochrome” – enjoyed unequalled success and recognition that reached their apogee in 1961 at the Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld, in what was the biggest solo exhibition of his lifetime. A genuine intermediary, he built an effective network of contacts and friendships between France and Germany, loyal, in that respect, with the old avant-garde dream of a cosmopolitanism that reaches across frontiers.
After “Yves Klein USA”, this book, produced in collaboration with the Yves Klein Archives, presents about 250 documents, photographs and correspondences, most of them previously unpublished, bearing witness to the close and friendly relationship Yves Klein tied with the German art scene. Throughout the book, these travels, exchanges and encounters allow the reader to meet artists such as Norbert Kricke, Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, Günther Uecker, Konrad Klapheck, gallerist Alfred Schmela and Krefeld Museum’s Director Paul Wember. Antje Kramer-Mallordy’s essay and Rotraut Klein-Moquay’s words will guide the reader through this cross-border adventure"