SCHIEDAM.- The Stedelijk Museum Schiedam will present a landmark exhibition:Yves Klein & his artist family: Fred, Marie and Rotraut. For the first time, this exhibition brings together the works of the Klein family, featuring Yves Klein (1928-1962), his parents Fred Klein (1898-1990) and Marie Raymond (1908-1988), and his wife Rotraut Uecker (1938). This marks a significant moment, as it is the first time since 1965 that such a substantial collection of Yves Klein’s work will be displayed in the Netherlands. While Yves Klein is celebrated worldwide for his iconic monochrome paintings, many are unaware that his family members were also accomplished artists, each with a deep passion for colour and the cosmos. It is also less well-known that Yves Klein’s parents were dual French and Dutch nationals, which established a lasting connection with the Netherlands. The exhibition not only highlights the artistic dialogue within the family but also their ties to the Netherlands, particularly to Schiedam, which houses the largest collection of works by Fred Klein (in Dutch known as Frits Klein).

When we think of Yves Klein, his distinctive shade of blue – International Klein Blue, which he patented in 1960 – immediately comes to mind. Throughout his brief yet remarkable life, he was surrounded by a colourful family of artists. His father, mother, and wife were all engaged in their own artistic pursuits, inspiring and challenging one another. Although Yves Klein’s work is still celebrated internationally, it has been decades since an exhibition of his work was held in the Netherlands. Thanks to close collaboration with the Yves Klein Archives in Paris, a significant number of his works will be displayed together in a Dutch museum for the first time since the exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1965.

Colour and cosmos

​Although the works of the Klein family members were created independently, they share a remarkable affinity for vibrant colours and a profound interest in the cosmos. Through this, they create new worlds. The exhibition Yves Klein & his artist family: Fred, Marie and Rotraut showcases the similarities and differences in their oeuvres. The works of this extraordinary family of artists will also be contextualised within the broader history of art, highlighting their active roles in the development of modern visual art and the networks in which they participated.

Dutch family history: Fred Klein and Marie Raymond

​Fred Klein (1898–1990) was born in Bandung, Indonesia. He moved to the Netherlands with his family at the age of five and studied in Rotterdam. He spent much of his adult life shuttling between Paris and Wassenaar. He painted landscapes, including beaches and parks, as well as circus scenes featuring horses. His dreamlike paintings suggest the influence of Claude Monet, Pierre Bonnard, and William Turner. Fred Klein is often referred to as the 'painter of light', but his work is thematically closer to that of Marc Chagall and Giorgio de Chirico.

While in Paris, he maintained connections with various Dutch artists and regularly exhibited in the Netherlands. Notable exhibitions include the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam in 1965, the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam in 1968, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 1978, and Pulchri in The Hague in 1988.

His works are included in the National Collection, the art collection of the Dutch Central Bank, and the Centraal Museum in Utrecht. They can also be found in the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam and in private collections across the Netherlands.

Fred Klein married the Frenchwoman Marie Raymond, who acquired Dutch citizenship through their marriage. In the 1950s, Marie Raymond (1908-1988) organised weekly salon gatherings for Parisian artists, museum directors, writers and scientists and had a column as an art critic in the Dutch magazine ‘Kroniek van Kunst en Kultuur’, making her an ambassador for Parisian artistic life in the Netherlands until 1958. Her paintings initially consist of framed planes of colour; later, in the 1950s, these evolved into standalone planes of colour and loose forms. In 1956, she exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, which also holds one of her works in its collection. In 1957, she exhibited at the Utrechtse Kring, a cultural hub for visual artists, writers, musicians, and other creatives. Her work can also be found in private collections.

In the same year that Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam organised a solo exhibition of their son, the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam hosted a solo show for Fred Klein (1965). Despite the prevailing trend of abstraction in the post-war art scene, a significant audience remained devoted to Fred Klein’s figurative works. The Stedelijk Museum Schiedam acquired the large canvas The Flower Shop for its collection. A few years earlier, in 1957, the museum had exhibited Sérénité du Printemps, a work by Yves's mother, Marie Raymond.

Director Anne de Haij: “It is remarkable that the works of Yves Klein and his partner Rotraut can now be added to the illustrious exhibition history of the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam. That brings things full circle.”

Yves Klein

​Yves Klein (1928-1962) was born in Nice. Initially, it was unclear whether he would follow in his parents’ artistic footsteps. After repeatedly dropping out of various courses and rambling around, he travelled to Japan in 1952, to perfect his judo and earned a black belt at the Kodokan Judo Institute in Tokyo. Upon returning to Paris, he opened a judo school. Through this sport, Klein found an outlet for his fascination with body posture, movement, and energy — elements that would later find expression in his art. Shortly after losing a judo match to the well known Anton Geesink in Utrecht in 1954, he decided to focus more on his art, especially after discovering the works of Mondrian and Van Gogh that same year. Yves eventually made his artistic debut in 1955 with a solo exhibition titled Yves – Peintures at the Club des Solitaires Editions Lacoste in Paris, where he displayed his monochrome canvases in different colours for the first time. The intense blue monochromes in particular prove to be an appealing representation of infinity and are intended to reflect the immateriality of space. This unique formula, which combines ultramarine pigments with a new binder that preserves their intensity, was patented in 1960 as International Klein Blue (IKB) and became Yves Klein’s ultimate artistic signature. But his work was much more than that: he collaborated with human models as living brushes, leaving imprints on canvases with their paint-covered bodies. His profound influence on the art world stemmed from a multitude of exhibitions, performances, happenings, and other events, many of which he organised himself. His art is radical, intelligent, versatile and audacious. His parents had very different reactions to his work and success: while his mother Marie Raymond encouraged him, his father Fred Klein remained more critical and distant.

Yves’ work has been seen only sporadically in exhibitions in the Netherlands, with the last exhibition taking place at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1965. His artworks are featured in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, as well as various private collections.

Rotraut

​Rotraut, born Rotraut Uecker (1938), is an artist who creates drawings, paintings, and sculptures inspired by the forms and phenomena of nature and the cosmos. In 1958, she met Yves Klein, with whom she began an intensive collaboration. They married in 1962, shortly before his death. She was his assistant, muse, and model. In 1956, Rotraut created her first Galaxies. She produced visual points of light resembling stars in the cosmos by dripping glue onto a wooden board, covering it with black ink or paint, and then sanding it down. In 1964, she exhibited her Galaxies at the Amstel 47 gallery in Amsterdam. In her seriesVol de sensibilité, she explores the sensitivity to form of painters such as Rubens, Cézanne, and Gauguin. She achieves this by projecting slides of their paintings onto large sheets of paper and then emphatically overpainting the colours in a way that reflects her own feelings about the movements. Rotraut continues to create art and initiated together with Daniel Moquay the Yves Klein Archives and more recently the Yves Klein Foundation.

​The exhibition

​Spanning three floors of one wing of the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, the exhibitionYves Klein & his artist family: Fred, Marie and Rotraut presents the works of four artists. In addition to their art, the exhibition features extensive archival materials – including letters, photographs, and printed documents – that illuminate the family members’ lives and their distinctive connections to the Netherlands.

Through the art created within this single family, the museum traces the evolution from figuration to abstraction and the emergence of conceptual art. The exhibition also emphasizes that this progression is not linear but rather a convergence of diverse artistic perspectives that have long coexisted.

With Yves Klein & his artist family: Fred, Marie and Rotraut, the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam once again offers an exhibition that sheds light on international artists from an unexpected and Dutch perspective. Previous examples include Manzoni in Holland (2019) and Yayoi Kusama: The Dutch Years 1965-1970 (2023-2024). These exhibitions have laid the foundation for introducing Yves Klein and his artist family to a wide and varied audience.

Mattijs Visser from the 0-INSTITUTE developed the concept for this exhibition and was also responsible for the Yayoi Kusama exhibition. Colin Huizing, who previously curated the Piero Manzoni exhibition, joins Visser on the curatorial team. Yves Klein & his artist family: Frits, Marie and Rotraut is created in close collaboration with the Yves Klein Archives in Paris.