Skip to main content

Creativity Quote by Yves Klein

"The dominant invades the entire picture, as it were. In this way I seek to individualize the color, because I have come to believe that there is a living world of each color and I express these worlds"

About this Quote

Klein talks about color the way most people talk about weather: not as decoration, but as an atmosphere you step into. "The dominant" is his key move. He isn't arranging hues politely across a canvas; he's letting one color occupy the whole field until it becomes a condition, a pressure, a mood. That language of invasion is telling: the point is totality. If the color takes over "the entire picture", the viewer loses the usual footholds - composition, narrative, recognizable objects - and has to confront sensation without translation.

The subtext is a rebellion against the idea that painting's job is to represent something else. Klein is arguing that color can be an event in its own right, with its own internal "living world". It's mystical, yes, but also strategic. By claiming each color has a life, he gives monochrome painting a new legitimacy: not an absence of content, but a concentration of it. Individualizing color means treating it like a protagonist rather than a supporting actor.

Context matters here: postwar European art was busy dismantling old certainties, and Klein pushes that dismantling toward the spiritual and the theatrical. His famous International Klein Blue and immersive installations aren't just formal experiments; they are attempts to engineer a direct encounter, bypassing intellect and symbolism. The quote is a manifesto for a kind of sensory absolutism: one color, one world, no alibis.

Quote Details

TopicArt
SourceHelp us find the source
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Klein, Yves. (2026, January 16). The dominant invades the entire picture, as it were. In this way I seek to individualize the color, because I have come to believe that there is a living world of each color and I express these worlds. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-dominant-invades-the-entire-picture-as-it-116661/

Chicago Style
Klein, Yves. "The dominant invades the entire picture, as it were. In this way I seek to individualize the color, because I have come to believe that there is a living world of each color and I express these worlds." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-dominant-invades-the-entire-picture-as-it-116661/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The dominant invades the entire picture, as it were. In this way I seek to individualize the color, because I have come to believe that there is a living world of each color and I express these worlds." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-dominant-invades-the-entire-picture-as-it-116661/. Accessed 24 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Yves Add to List
The dominant invades the entire picture: I individualize color
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

France Flag

Yves Klein (April 28, 1928 - June 6, 1962) was a Artist from France.

1 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes