[1][2] Klein started doing monochrome paintings in 1947, aiming to a complete rejection of the concept of representation in art.
This is one of his later paintings in that style, because it has a more fine quality and shows more uniformity in texture than his previous works.
The original blue monochrome paintings had no titles, but after Klein's death, in 1962, his widow, Rotraut Klein-Moquay, named them in a sequential order, from IKB 1 to IKB 194, which doesn't reflect a chronological order.
Klein-Moquay however stated that she was sure that the current work was one of the four executed in 1959, when the couple was in Gelsenkirchen, West Germany.
He also stated that "this colour had a quality close to pure space and he associated it with immaterial values beyond what can be seen or touched", according with the Tate website.