Rare 14-foot Yves Klein painting sells for $21.4 million at Christie’s in Paris

A 14-foot-wide Yves Klein painting—the largest format the artist has ever created using his signature pigment, International Klein Blue (IKB)—sold for €18.4 million ($21.4 million) at Christie’s in Paris, setting a new auction record for the artist in France.

Provided as a covered lot for the house Avant-garde art, including Thinking Italian On sale this week, the work is titled California (IKB 71) Estimates range from €16 million to €25 million (US$18 million to US$29 million) upon request.

as art newsSarah Douglas reported in September, California (IKB 71) is one of the few Kleins to hold a title named after the state where he exhibited the work shortly after it was created in 1961. Klein, who lives in Paris, has only visited the United States once, when he went to meet his long-time supporter Virginia Dwan, the owner of a legendary Los Angeles gallery. But there’s an extra chapter to the painting’s provenance, which Christie’s, in collaboration with the Yves Klein Foundation, recently unveiled: on its way from Paris to California, it stopped in New York, where it appeared in an exhibition with dealer Leo Castelli. Klein died the following year, 1962, at the age of 34, after a whirlwind career.

California (IKB 71) The work has been in a New York collection since 2005, when it was owned by Swiss collector George Marci and later acquired through Pace Gallery. The work was on long-term loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 2005 to 2008, when it was last publicly exhibited.

Art world insiders revealed that although Christie’s will not comment on consignors in September art news It was allegedly collected by former United Technologies chairman George David, whose company supported exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art at the time, including those on Van Gogh and Jasper Johns. David did not respond to a request for comment.