Deutsch

Imi Knoebel, geboren 1940, lebt und arbeitet in Düsseldorf. Nach vorbereitenden Studien im Sinne des Bauhaus-Vorkurses an der Werkkunstschule Darmstadt lernte er seit 1964 an die Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, wo er zusammen mit Jörg Immendorff die Klasse von Joseph Beuys besuchte. Seit dieser Zeit prägte ihn vor allem das Werk von Kasimir Malewitsch und dessen Idee der offensiven Gegenstandslosigkeit. Im Zentrum seines Schaffens steht heute das Zusammenspiel und die autonome Wirkung von Farbe, Form, Trägergrund und Situation des Raumes, wobei Assemblagen aus vorgefundenen Alltagsstücken das vielschichtige, mit intermedialen Bezügen und seriellen Verfahrensweisen operierende Werk ergänzen. Neben großen musealen Einzelausstellungen, u.a. 1975 in Düsseldorf, 1983 in Winterthur und Bonn und 1992 und 2003 in Hamburg, zeigten immer wieder auch wichtige Gruppenausstellungen wie die documenta 5, 6, 7 und 8 seine Arbeiten. 1996 fand im Haus der Kunst, München, eine große Retrospektive seines Werkes statt.

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English

Imi Knoebel was born in 1940 and currently lives and works in Düsseldorf. After completing preparatory studies in 1964 at the Werkkunstschule Darmstadt, in a program modeled after the Bauhaus Vorkurs, Knoebel continued his education at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. There, alongside Jörg Immendorff and Blinky Polermo, he was able to study under Joseph Beuys. His work has been largely influenced by that of Kasimir Malevich and his radical abstraction. Knoebel's work centers on both the interplay and the autonomous effects of color, form, the surface of the canvas and spacial situation. For Knoebel, these fundamental qualities of color--their evocations, their uniqueness--come forward and define his pieces. This figured prominently in his famous 1977 exhibition "Colors--For Blinky" in Cologne, a powerful early example of his aesthetic sensibility, as well as in his more recent "knife-cuts," a sort of assemblage where forms themselves appear as subordinate or, maybe more accurately, designated by the supremacy of color itself. These latter knife-cuts echo the new stained glass windows at the cathedral in Reims, a project for which Knoebel was commissioned in 2011.

In addition to numerous exhibitions--recently at the Deutsche Guggenheim and Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin in 2009 and a solo show at Mary Boone in New York in 2011--Knoebel's work has also been shown in a number of significant group exhibitions such as documentas 5, 6, 7 and 8. A major retrospective of his work took place in 1996 at the Haus der Kunst in Munich.

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