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PIERRE RESTANY (1930–2003)
Pierre Restany was a French art critic and curator best known for championing the artists he dubbed the Nouveaux Realistes, which included Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, Arman, Raymond Hains, and Niki de Saint Phalle. Restany’s impassioned writing and organizational energy was a crucial factor in the movement‘s success. Following the dissolution of the group in 1963, Restany became a peripatetic critic, curator and magazine editor, contributing regularly to the Italian design magazine Domus, and publishing numerous books and countless catalogue essays. When the experimental exhibition space Palais de Tokyo opened in Paris in 2002, he was named its president, an honor that acknowledged his relevance to a new generation of socially oriented French artists and critics. His books include Yves Klein; L’Autre face de l’art; and Une vie dans l’art.
Yves Klein book cover
YVES KLEIN
Fire at the Heart of the Void
Translated by ANDREA LOSELLE
with an introduction by KLAUS OTTMANN
Revised and enlarged second edition 2005
Paperback original, 132 pages, color and bw. ills., $22
ISBN: 978-0-88214-564-8
Kindle/Apple Books edition, $9.99
ISBN: 978-0-88214-978-3
Restany’s groundbreaking study shows that the myth of fire was the culmination of the artist’s quest for the immaterial. The visionary French conceptual artist and “painter of the Void” Yves Klein (1928–1962) was an artist with a keen philosophical mind, yet deeply spiritual.
Yves Klein creating Fire Paintings
 
The aim of this book is to situate Fire in Yves Klein’s work from the triple perspectives of mythic projection, ritual symbology, and artistic practice.
—PIERRE RESTANY