Portrait Relief of Claude Pascal

Mediums: International Klein Blue pigment on bronze, gold leaf on wood.
Location: Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona (the USA).

This iconic picture of Klein’s close friend, poet Claude Pascal, had to become a part of a collective portrait of the associates of the New Realism group. It was completed a few months before the untimely death of the author at the age of 34. Klein planned to depict his friends and colleagues in the nude genre, all of them in blue, in one pose and against a majestic gold background. Klein’s self-portrait was supposed to be gold on a blue background. The techniques used by the author (height, frontal angle) resemble classical Roman sculptures of emperors. The author managed to make three preliminary plaster casts and finally finished the relief of Arman from polyester resin. After Klein’s death, his widow Rotraut Klein-Moquay decided to produce 12 copies of each portrait. They were cast in bronze – the material that Eve himself did not use, possibly due to its high cost.