Yves Klein — Tables For Sale

Yves Klein conceived his Table series in 1961, designing furniture that translated the ideas behind his International Klein Blue (IKB) monochromes into functional objects. Klein died in 1962, only a year after developing the design, and the tables did not go into production until 1963, when his widow, Rotraut Klein-Moquay, began overseeing their fabrication according to his original specifications — a role she has continued in the decades since.

Each table pairs a glass top with a wood, steel and plexiglass base, so that the material held beneath the glass becomes the visible surface of the piece. The series was produced in three variants, distinguished by what fills that base: Table Bleue, saturated with Klein's patented International Klein Blue pigment; Table Rose, filled with a rose-toned pigment; and Table Monogold, in which around 3,000 individual sheets of gold leaf line the interior. Each version restates, in a different register, Klein's lifelong preoccupation with pure, unmodulated colour and surface as a vehicle for immaterial sensation.

By recasting a piece of everyday furniture as a support for his signature pigments, Klein extended the logic of the monochrome beyond the wall and into domestic space, blurring the line between artwork and object of use. The tables sit alongside his sponge sculptures and blue reliefs as one of the clearest demonstrations of his belief that colour itself, rather than form or narrative, could carry the full weight of an artwork.

Each table in the ongoing edition is signed "R. Klein-Moquay" and numbered on a label affixed to its underside, continuing a production process personally supervised by Klein's widow since the series began.