A wooden door frame opens into a room within a room. As one passes through this seemingly unremarkable entryway, the frame’s other half, an unhinged door, is propped against the facing wall. Cut into the door, sans doorknob and hardware, are six inset panels arranged in a grid pattern that take the form of two stacked crosses, lending the space a meditative, chapel-like atmosphere. The surfaces of both…

Half shaman, half showman, a judo champion who “leapt into the void,” a mystic devoted to Saint Rita and self-identified as the painter of space who plotted an ultramarine blue revolution, an architect who dreamed of walls of fire and roofs of air, Yves Klein took the European art scene by storm through a career that barely lasted eight years (1954–1962). After that, it was impossible to look at painting…