Early Years
The Iris Clert Gallery opened in 1955, in the middle of Paris's fine-art district. Yves Klein and Iris Clert first met in December 1955, when the still unknown artist approached Clert in her newly-opened gallery, attempting to solicit his monochrome artwork. Klein persuaded Clert to keep one of his paintings, a small orange monochrome, as a trial run. She displayed the monochrome in the corner of the one-room gallery. The painting proved to be successful, and upon Klein’s return, Clert invited him to exhibit a few of his monochromes in the gallery's first major exhibition in April 1957, called Micro-Salon d’Avril (Micro-Salon of April).
Micro-Salon d’Avril consisted of over 250 artworks, no larger than a postcard, by over a hundred artists. Besides Klein, the exhibit featured works from Pablo Picasso and Max Ernst, as well as Klein’s parents. The exhibition gained the small one-room gallery considerable notoriety amongst the avant-garde of Paris, and the single-concept-driven approach would become a distinguishing characteristic of the Iris Clert Gallery.
Klein’s showing in the Micro-Salon d’Avril also proved a success, and within a month, he had his own exhibition in the Clert Gallery: Propositions Monochromes (Monochrome Propositions). It too was a success, though not necessarily for its artistic merit at first. Proudly displayed in the large store-front window was a single blue monochrome, with a number of similar monochromes visible on the gallery walls behind it. According to Clert, the one-color painting caused quite a stir in the neighborhood: art students made jokes, the elderly seemed confused – everyone was talking about it.
As part of the opening-night extravaganza, Klein performed for the first time his Monotone Symphony (1949, formally The Monotone-Silence Symphony), a 40-minute orchestral piece consisting of a single 20-minute sustained chord followed by a 20-minute silence. Opening night included releasing 1,001 blue balloons into the sky, as a symbolic gesture by Klein which he called "aerostatic sculpture."
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