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Imi Knoebel (/i:mi: kno:ʊbəl/) (born Klaus Wolf Knoebel; 31 December 1940) is a German artist. Knoebel is known for his minimalist, Abstract art painting and sculpture. The "Messerschnitt" or "knife cuts," is a recurring technique he employs, along with his regular use of the primary colors, red, yellow and blue. Knoebel lives and works in Düsseldorf.
Between 1966 and 1969, Knoebel worked on a series of "Linienbildern", or line paintings, encompassing 90 panels "The Security of the Pure Square" - Karola Krauss on Imi Knoebel Deutsche Bank ArtMag. Another series of 250,000 "Linienbilder" drawings were done on DIN A4 sheets in the years between 1969 and 1973/75. Imi Knoebel Virtual Museum of Modernism NRW. In 1968 Knoebel created his first major work, an installation with a variety of geometrical objects called Raum 19, named after classroom No. 19, which Beuys had given to his students at the academy. Raum 19 comprises seventy-seven components made from wood and Masonite, including painting stretchers, both assembled and in pieces; large constructions of stretchers with untreated Masonite attached as picture planes; and larger cubic volumes and curved blocks that resemble sections of an arched window or door frame.Colin Lang (September 2008), Imi Knoebel Artforum
In 1992, Knoebel created a second version of “Raum 19” for the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt (Hessian State Museum Darmstadt) in close proximity to Joseph Beuys' “ Block Beuys.” In 1968, Knoebel also used photography as an artistic medium.
Beginning in 1968, Knoebel was one of the first Beuys students to use photography as an independent artistic medium. For his Innenprojektionen ( Interior Projections; 1968–1970) black-and-white photographs, he started using empty slide projections, creating empty squares of light, projected on a wall or in a darkened, closed-off room.Jörg Heiser, Pleasure Series: Seriality and Color in Knoebel’s Work Deutsche Bank ArtMag. This later evolved to his placing slides covered in copy ink with precisely carved vertical and horizontal lines into the projector and then cast throughout the room. Projecting these lines at various angles throughout a darkened space, at windows, corners, wall fittings and architectural irregularities, offered limitless possibilities for the artist. Knoebel documented these light projections with his camera and displayed the variations in large grids, often with as many as 80 photographs comprising a single work. Knoebel's 1968 Projektion 1, is a series of luminous, disorienting black-and-white photographs of light projections that bring to mind the architectural slicings that Gordon Matta-Clark was conducting at that time.Roberta Smith (August 25, 2011) A Collection’s Contest of Objects New York Times. Projection X (1970–71) and Projektion X Remake (2005), two versions of the same video concept, Project, Transform, Erase: Anthony McCall and Imi Knoebel, June 09 - September 30, 2007 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. are his only videotapes based on these outdoor projections. During a nocturnal drive through the sleeping city of Darmstadt, a large, luminous X-shaped beam of light was projected from a vehicle onto the walls of buildings.
The collection of the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt (Hessian State Museum Darmstadt) holds extensive series of photographs, slides, and the video Projection X by Knoebel.
From the mid-1970s on, Knoebel then turned towards a gestural use of color on layered plywood boards or metal plates. From 1975 to date, Knoebel has been working on overlapping coloured rectangles called "Mennigebilder" ("Red Lead Pictures"), named after an anti-corrosion paint used in steel construction by the name of Mennige Paint, which the artist has used in these works. Whereas in his early years his palette was reduced to white, black, and brown, since 1977 he has been producing works with more color. Imi Knoebel - Works from the Schaufler Collection, March 19 - October 2, 2011 Schauwerk Sindelfingen. His painting has since been characterized by a gesturally expressive application of colour on panels of layered plywood and metal placed in specific spatial relation. Imi Knoebel: WEISS - SCHWARZ, March 25 - May 15, 201 Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg. In the 1980s, Knoebel continued his associative loading of geometricizing picture elements and started to focus on the portrait. The arrangement of three, in colour nuanced vertical rectangulars next to and between two horizontal rectangulars is Knoebel's formal solution for depicting the notion ‘portrait’.
Knoebel made a series of 24 colorful monochromes in homage to his friend Blinky Palermo after Palermo's death in 1977.Benjamin Genocchio (August 14, 2008), A Language in Itself of Colored Shapes and Forms New York Times. The monumental series, acquired by Dia Art Foundation in the 1970s, was meticulously restored by the artist, who installed the work at in May 2008, marking its first-ever exhibition in North America. In 1997, the German Bundestag commissioned Knoebel to create the four-part installation Rot Gelb Weiß Blau 1-4 for one of its office buildings. In June 2011, Knoebel's six stained-glass panes within the apse of the Notre-Dame de Reims Cathedral were unveiled alongside the stained-glass works of Marc Chagall completed in 1974.
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