(born 1940 in Dessau)
Paris - Düsseldorf I (in 2 parts), 2001, acrylic on aluminium, numbered 1 and 2 by the artist on the reverse, signed imi on 2, each 34 x 26 cm, (2)

Provenance:
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris Marais (label on the reverse of 2)
acquired 2001 from the above by the present owner in 2001 –
Private Collection, Belgium

Exhibited:
Paris Marais, Kuckucke, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 5 May - 16 June 2001

Imi Knoebel’s pictures lend form to colour and rhythm. His compositions are based on a fundamental interest in form, colour, segmentation and surfaces. The aesthetic experience of the objects, hybrid between painting and sculpture, of the wall images and room installations is determined by the volume of the objects and their relationship to the space. A further characteristic of his work, which he frequently conceives in systematic series or groups, is the play with the rough surfaces of simple materials, such as hardboard and aluminium.

Knoebel, born in 1940 as Klaus Wolf Knoebel in Dessau, studied at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts under Josef Beuys in the 1960s, together with Imi Giese and Blinky Palermo. Another important inspiration for him was Kasimir Malevich’s black square and his idea of a pure abstraction via the exploration of form, colour and material. Fascinated by beginning at the zero point of design, he has always remained true to his minimalistic approach and to an engagement with the basic questions of non-objective painting. In addition to numerous individual exhibitions in museums (1975 Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 1996 Haus der Kunst Munich, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2007 MOMA San Francisco, 2009 Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, 2015 Kunstsammlung NRW Düsseldorf), his work has also been represented four times at the Documenta in Kassel (1971, 1977, 1982, 1987).

The present, two-part work is constructed of various aluminium plaques in layers, painted in colour, which partly overlap each other. Whereas in the foreground one monochrome panel in broken white and one in light pink are visible, behind these at the right and left borders additional plaques appear in various tones of green, yellow and white. The coloured frame in combination with the doubling and variation of the form in the diptych create an effect that is equally atmospheric as well as analytically precisely calculated. The motif of the layering permeates Knoebel’s entire oeuvre. Frequently he has stacked up canvases and plaques, leant them in succession against the wall and affixed them to it, in order to investigate the surfaces encountering each other, and, by means of the layering of the pictorial elements, to underscore the third dimension of the image carrier, its reification and its potential. “A picture concealed beneath the picture is in fact a picture that lets itself not so much be seen as imagined on the basis of what little of it is left showing. To put it another way, one layer of these pictures is there for the eye, the other for the mind’s eye.” (Michael Gauthier, “The Spirit of Strata”, in: Kuckucke, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris 2001, page 22)