IMI KNOEBEL

“Often it is the small amount which is perfectly sufficient, and you would simply be annoyed with everything, because it is too much.” Imi Knoebel

Imi Knoebel is one of the few representatives of a radical, non-representational style of painting in Germany. Inspired by like-minded fellow campaigners at the Dusseldorf Kunstakademie, such as Blinky Palermo and Imi Giese, as well as his legendary teacher Joseph Beuys, in the 1960s he developed a pictorial language reduced to rectangular basic forms with black and white. All other forms and colours were contained within the form and colour of this basic element. By means of splintering, dividing, multiplying and varying, all further elements could be extracted and formed. With Knoebel, the painted picture became a three-dimensional object, and the wall the pictorial ground. Through the use of simple industrial materials, Knoebel reinforced the object nature of his works.

At the end of the 1970s he extended his range of colour and form. Knoebel experimented with the interplay of colours in both fine nuances and strident blends, sounding out the cosmos of the variations of forms. The principle of the series enabled him to express his love of experimentation to the full. As in the intensely coloured work from the series "14 Farben 15 Stäbe" presented here, a pictorial idea is explored and extended in countless possibilities.

This play on variation very much comes to fruition in the series Anima Mundi (Lot 3523), produced since 2010. “What binds together the world of appearances and at the same time leads to the whole cosmos of colours, is what Knoebel illustrates most wonderfully with his series.” (Martin Schulz in: FarbRaumKörper, Exh. Cat. Goetz collection, Berlin 2017, p. 70.)

All the works of the series follow the same structure: a vertical rectangle is framed by 4 strips, with the upper and lower strips enclosing the lateral strips. The result is 4 narrow colour fields, which are grouped around the one central field. This underlying formal principle is the same in all the works of "Anima Mundi" as well as "14 Farben 15 Stäbe". The variations arise from the choice of colours. All nuances of colour are possible, whether cold or warm, powerful or discreet, shiny or matt, in all the combinations. Thus, an endless wealth of possibilities is offered. The pictorial effect is equally rich in variety: dominant or restrained, harmonious or dissonant, light or heavy, loud or quiet.

In their characteristics and in their resonance with the viewer they are as multifarious as life. Each work exists in its own right and has a one-off character but is part of a whole.