In order to remove traditional brushstrokes and the artist's personal touch from painting, the French avant-garde artist Yves Klein developed a radical method: *Anthropometries* (*Anthropométries*). First presented in a public performance on 9 March 1960 at the Galerie Internationale d'Art Contemporain in Paris, Klein appeared in a tuxedo to direct nude models without ever touching the paint himself. The models coated their bodies in his patented *International Klein Blue* (IKB) and pressed themselves against large sheets of paper mounted on canvas. The action was accompanied by a live orchestra playing Klein's *Monotone-Silence Symphony*—a single continuous tone played for 20 minutes followed by 20 minutes of silence.

The shapes left on the canvas are far from classical anatomical depictions. The head, arms, and legs are usually missing; only the primal prints of the torso, breasts, and thighs remain. Klein was inspired by the imprints left by judo fighters on mats and the ghostly shadows burned onto walls by the atomic blast in Hiroshima. To him, the body print was not just a silhouette, but the trace of vital energy and spirit captured on the surface.

The term *Anthropometry*, coined by art critic Pierre Restany from the Greek words for 'human measurement', sums up how Klein used the body as both a tool of measurement and the medium itself. By turning painting into an event combining time, movement, and sound, the *Anthropometries* paved the way for Performance Art and Conceptual Art.

Today held in major collections such as the Centre Pompidou and Museum Ludwig, these works remain a ground-breaking milestone in the history of using the human body as both the subject and object of art.