IKB 280 is one of the rare blue monochrome paintings on Isorel Yves Klein made. He began making monochromes in 1947, considering them to be a way of rejecting the idea of representation in painting. Exhibited in 1955 under the title Yves, Peintures, the first monochromes were multicoloured and on an uneven surface. It was to make them more capable of carrying out the function that Yves Klein assigned to painting – to invest a space with sensibility – that he restricted them in 1957 to the colour blue alone.
Since the International Klein Blue was registered as a trademark colour in 1957, IKB 280 stands as one of his first monochrome paintings that were ever made with this kind of medium. Klein did not give titles to these works, but after his death in 1962, his widow Rotraut Klein-Moquay numbered all the known blue monochromes which did not reflect their chronological order.
Klein not often fully signed his monochromes, but in this case the artist used a rare signature: the stamp of a star that he only left on a couple of works.
