Milan, January 1957. The Apollinaire Gallery - small but refined - fills up with a crowd anticipating something unusual. At the center of this magnetic pull stands the young French artist Yves Klein. He doesn’t bring paintings with lines, shapes, or images. Instead - eleven identical canvases, completely covered in a mysterious, deep shade of blue.
The color seems almost unreal - it doesn’t just please the eye, it draws you in, as if opening a door to something unknown.
This color has a name Klein invented himself - International Klein Blue, or simply IKB. To him, it’s not just pigment - it’s a symbol of infinity, pure sensuality, a spiritual space without boundaries.
Each painting is like a window into the sky you see with your eyes closed.
The viewers are confused. All the canvases are the same. No frames. No signatures. And yet - something shifts in the air. The guests aren’t looking at the paintings - they are inside them.
And then - the climax.
Klein serves the guests blue cocktails, colored with the same IKB. People laugh, drink, admire the canvases. No one suspects this will become part of the artistic act. The next morning they notice: their urine is that same supernatural blue.
And now the art isn’t just on the walls. It’s inside them. Their bodies have become part of the artistic gesture.
This is no longer an exhibition. This is performance. A ritual. A movement of art beyond the canvas - into the body, into consciousness.
Klein doesn’t create images - he creates experience.
And this experience speaks not of matter, but of emptiness filled with meaning. Of the spiritual in the formless. Of the power of color as a channel to the invisible.
He believed that true art is not what we see, but what we feel, live through, absorb.
And that night in Milan, everyone - artists, critics, socialites - became part of his endless blue vision. And maybe, for a moment, touched eternity.
How Yves Klein embodied the concept: “Pure Sensuality Through Color”
Klein believed that color has the power to evoke emotion and spiritual elevation. He abandoned lines, images, and narratives to let color speak directly to the viewer’s subconscious.
It was a performance in which the viewer and their body became part of the artwork.
He said:
“I want to immerse the viewer in the infinite blue sky they see when they close their eyes.”
The exhibition Proposte Monochrome, Epoca Blu aimed to dissolve the boundary between art and spiritual experience. The color was meant to become a gateway into the “invisible” - a pure idea, energy, spirit.
Klein’s Philosophy: “Emptiness as Infinity”
Yves Klein was fascinated by Eastern philosophy, Zen Buddhism, and esotericism.
He believed that the greatest power lies in emptiness, and that blue symbolized the invisible, the infinite, the spiritual.
Why this exhibition became historic:
It changed the perception of monochrome as an “empty” genre.
It shattered the idea of art as purely material.
It was the first time the viewer’s body was truly engaged in the artistic process.
It gave birth to a new form - performance art and installation as spatial experience.
Why it matters
Yves Klein wanted to create a pure emotional experience of color, free from form, and IKB became the symbol of that.
He believed that color alone could be a spiritual experience.
This event became a prime example of performative art - where not just the object, but the artist’s actions and the audience’s interaction become the artwork.
Even if some details of this story may be myth or exaggeration, it perfectly illustrates the radical spirit - and the humor - that fueled 20th-century avant-garde art.
Klein proved: one color is enough, if it holds energy.
Fashion brands, inspired by this, began building entire collections around a single color or shade.
International Klein Blue became a fashion hit once again in the 2020s. In the Spring/Summer 2020 season, this deep ultramarine shade was prominently featured on runways - from GMBH to Each x Other and Boss - with designers pairing IKB with modern silhouettes, often crafting fully monochromatic looks.
One of the most striking examples was the Balenciaga Fall 2020 show, where models walked down a runway immersed in a flood of IKB: the floor, water, backdrop, and lighting - everything was drenched in this shade. Demna Gvasalia turned the color into the main character of the show. The space transformed into a post-apocalyptic “blue abyss” - a vision that referred not only to fashion but also to Klein’s philosophy of spiritual purification, infinity, and unsettling beauty.
This color still appears today in ad campaigns by Comme des Garçons, Céline, Bottega Veneta; on covers of Vogue, i-D, Dazed - as background or central focus.
It adds unease but also calm, depth without pretension, the body without nudity.
