"Zone de sensibilitè picturale immatèrielle Sèrie n°1, Zone n°02" by Yves Klein (1959) fetched over €1 million at auction
It is sometimes said that absolutely anything can be bought and sold. Sotheby's appears to have proved this by auctioning Yves Klein's "Zone de sensibilité picturale immatérielle Série n°1, Zone n°02." This receipt, confirming the transfer of ownership of an invisible work by the post-war French artist, was sold for twice its high estimate.
Yves Klein was continually questioning what constituted an object of art. What makes something art? Its immaterial potential? Starting in the early 1950s, he set out in quest of immaterial art. "Zone de sensibilité picturale immatérielle Série n°1, Zone n°02" (Zone of Immaterial Pictorial Sensitivity) testifies to the experiments of the French artist investigating the subjects of the void and the immaterial. This certificate of authenticity was produced a few months after the opening of the exhibition "The Void" at the gallery Iris Clert in Paris, April 28, 1958. On this occasion, the space had been emptied of all its contents. But, for Yves Klein, the gallery was far from empty, since it was saturated with "pictorial sensibility in its pure state."