Iris Clert Gallery

The Iris Clert Gallery (Galerie Iris Clert in French) was an art gallery named after its Greek owner and curator, Iris Clert. The single-room gallery was located on 3 in Paris, France. It was open from 1955 to 1971 and during that time housed artworks from many successful and influential artists of the time, including Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, Arman, Takis and René Laubies.

The Iris Clert Gallery opened in 1955, in the middle of Paris's fine-art district. Yves Klein and Iris Clert first met in December 1955, when the still unknown artist approached Clert in her newly opened gallery, attempting to solicit his monochrome artwork. Klein persuaded Clert to keep one of his paintings, a small orange monochrome, as a trial run. She displayed the monochrome in the corner of the one-room gallery. The painting proved to be successful, and upon Klein’s return, Clert invited him to exhibit a few of his monochromes in the gallery's first major exhibition in April 1957, called Micro-Salon d’Avril (Micro-Salon of April).

Micro-Salon d’Avril consisted of over 250 artworks, no larger than a postcard, by over a hundred artists. Besides Klein, the exhibit featured works from Pablo Picasso and Max Ernst, as well as Klein’s parents. The exhibition gained the small one-room gallery considerable notoriety amongst the avant-garde of Paris, and the single-concept-driven approach would become a distinguishing characteristic of the Iris Clert Gallery.

Klein’s showing in the Micro-Salon d’Avril also proved a success, and within a month, he had his own exhibition in the Clert Gallery: Propositions Monochromes (Monochrome Propositions). It too was a success, though not necessarily for its artistic merit at first. Proudly displayed in the large store-front window was a single blue monochrome, with a number of similar monochromes visible on the gallery walls behind it. According to Clert, the one-color painting caused quite a stir in the neighborhood: art students made jokes, the elderly seemed confused – everyone was talking about it.

As part of the opening-night extravaganza, Klein performed for the first time his Monotone Symphony (1949, formally The Monotone-Silence Symphony), a 40-minute orchestral piece consisting of a single 20-minute sustained chord followed by a 20-minute silence. Opening night included releasing 1,001 blue balloons into the sky, as a symbolic gesture by Klein which he called "aerostatic sculpture."

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