In a picky market, only the rarest of the rare will do—that’s what Christie’s is betting on with a major consignment for its sale in Paris next month. The house has secured a 14-foot-wide Yves Klein painting—the largest format the artist made in his signature pigment, International Klein Blue (IKB)—and it carries an estimate on request of €16 million to €25 million ($18 million–$29 million).
California (IKB71) is one of the few Kleins that comes with a title, named for the state where he showed the work shortly after it was made in 1961. The Paris-based Klein only visited the US once, when he went to see his longtime supporter Virginia Dwan, proprietor of a legendary Los Angeles gallery. But the painting’s provenance has an extra chapter that Christie’s, working with the Yves Klein Foundation, recently uncovered: on its way from Paris to California, it stopped in New York, where it appeared in a show with dealer Leo Castelli. Klein died the following year, in 1962, after a whirlwind career, at just 34 years old.
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“It’s this grand homecoming,” said Katharine Arnold, vice chairman of 20th/21st Century Art at Christie’s, referring to the painting’s return to Paris, where it was created. The only larger format Klein executed in IKB was his set of murals for the Glensenkirchen Opera House in Germany in the late 1950s. The color, Arnold observed, is “a little bit the sea, a little bit the sky, the kind of blue Klein would see in California that he would remember from the South of France…. It’s a museum-quality picture. It has gravity.” She said she hopes it goes to an institution.
California (IKB71) has been in the same New York collection since 2005, when it was acquired through Pace Gallery after being owned by Swiss collector George Marci. The work was on long-term loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 2005 to 2008, the last time it was publicly exhibited.
Christie’s would not comment on the consignor, but art world insiders familiar with the work told ARTnews that it comes from the collection of former United Technologies chairman George David, whose company supported Met exhibitions at the time, including shows of Van Gogh and Jasper Johns. David could not be reached for comment at press time.
The Klein will be offered in Christie’s Oct. 23 sale “Avant-Garde(s) Including Thinking Italian” in Paris.