About Art - Fire Fountain

Fire Fountain is the materialization of a project that its author, Yves Klein, was unable to make: the association between water and fire in a work conceived for a public space.

During a conference given at the Sorbonne on 2 July 1959, Yves Klein said that he had always been entranced by the fountains and jets of water in the gardens at La Granja, summer residence of the former Spanish monarchy. While visiting the place, Klein liked to imagine that the jets of water were actually fire, thus creating fire sculptures on water.

Although he wasn’t able to bring the idea to fruition, during his exhibition at the Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld, he did succeed in sending several spouts of flame into the air from the lawn in front of the Mies van der Rohe villa.

The row of five fountains standing in a reflecting pond at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, is reflected in a sheet of peaceful water. While decorative, they demonstrate the artist’s interest in fire, one of the four elements according to ancient tradition. Installed in 1997, the fountains evoke the birth of civilization. In Klein’s words: "For me, fire is the future without forgetting the past." Find out more about the French artist at: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Klein