Imi Knoebel
The oeuvre of Imi Knoebel (born 1940 in Dessau, Germany) spans many different media: from photography, light projections, and painting, to installation. His artistic practice is consistently both highly systematic as well as intuitive and free in form. This can also be seen in his titles, which are influenced by the subjective and the personal.
Knoebel’s artistic career began when he was a student at the Werkkunstschule in Darmstadt. From 1962 to 1964, he attended Walter Breker’s graphics course, which was based on the concepts of the preliminary courses at the Bauhaus taught by Johannes Itten and Lászlo Moholy-Nagy. It was here that he learned about the foundations of structural and constructivist artistic practices. In 1964, he and Rainer Giese (1942–1974) transferred to the Kunstakademie (Art Academy) Düsseldorf together. The two artists each adopted the pseudonym Imi (short for “Ich mit ihm”, which translates as “I’m with him”) as a first name. After they managed to get accepted into Joseph Beuys’s class in 1965, he let them use classroom 19 as a studio. Room 19, or “Raum 19” in German, would become an important basis of Knoebel’s work, and his artwork “Raum 19” from 1968 became a kind of source and mental storage space for his artistic reflections on the categories of picture and sculpture and their relationship to the surrounding space. Originally called “Hartfaserraum” (Fiberboard Room), “Raum 19” can be defined as a built painting consisting of layers, series, and stacks of fiberboards, three-dimensional objects, angles, and stretcher frames. Knoebel’s rejection of all forms of representation refers back to the artistic practice and theoretical work of Kazimir Malevich (1878–1935), whose socio-critical motivation and Suprematist, nonrepresentational painting had fascinated Knoebel already from an early age. Color became important in Knoebel’s works in the mid-1970s in response to the Color Field Painting and Minimalism in the US in the 1960s and ’70s. At this time, he created his own approach to formal aesthetics by using unrestricted, irregular shapes and no longer limiting his palette to only primary colors. In 1980, he began to work with the relationship between order and disorder in installations like “Genter Raum” (Ghent Room), while also increasingly integrating found objects into his artistic practice.
Knoebel has also often expanded his practice to include projects relating to architecture. From 2011 to 2015, he worked on the glass windows of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Reims, and in 2021 he created a permanent work of glass windows called “Basel” in the bar of the Volkshaus Basel. In the run-up to this work with panes of colored glass, Knoebel also made “Basel Fenster 10 Ed. (Entwurf Nr. 8 von 12)” (Basel Window, 10 Editions, Design No. 8 of 12) from 2020. This work, consisting of pieces of painted plastic foil, became part of the collection of Museum Haus Konstruktiv after Knoebel’s solo exhibition “Guten Morgen, weisses Kätzchen” (Good Morning, White Kitten) was shown at the Museum in 2018.
Nina Arnold
Knoebel’s artistic career began when he was a student at the Werkkunstschule in Darmstadt. From 1962 to 1964, he attended Walter Breker’s graphics course, which was based on the concepts of the preliminary courses at the Bauhaus taught by Johannes Itten and Lászlo Moholy-Nagy. It was here that he learned about the foundations of structural and constructivist artistic practices. In 1964, he and Rainer Giese (1942–1974) transferred to the Kunstakademie (Art Academy) Düsseldorf together. The two artists each adopted the pseudonym Imi (short for “Ich mit ihm”, which translates as “I’m with him”) as a first name. After they managed to get accepted into Joseph Beuys’s class in 1965, he let them use classroom 19 as a studio. Room 19, or “Raum 19” in German, would become an important basis of Knoebel’s work, and his artwork “Raum 19” from 1968 became a kind of source and mental storage space for his artistic reflections on the categories of picture and sculpture and their relationship to the surrounding space. Originally called “Hartfaserraum” (Fiberboard Room), “Raum 19” can be defined as a built painting consisting of layers, series, and stacks of fiberboards, three-dimensional objects, angles, and stretcher frames. Knoebel’s rejection of all forms of representation refers back to the artistic practice and theoretical work of Kazimir Malevich (1878–1935), whose socio-critical motivation and Suprematist, nonrepresentational painting had fascinated Knoebel already from an early age. Color became important in Knoebel’s works in the mid-1970s in response to the Color Field Painting and Minimalism in the US in the 1960s and ’70s. At this time, he created his own approach to formal aesthetics by using unrestricted, irregular shapes and no longer limiting his palette to only primary colors. In 1980, he began to work with the relationship between order and disorder in installations like “Genter Raum” (Ghent Room), while also increasingly integrating found objects into his artistic practice.
Knoebel has also often expanded his practice to include projects relating to architecture. From 2011 to 2015, he worked on the glass windows of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Reims, and in 2021 he created a permanent work of glass windows called “Basel” in the bar of the Volkshaus Basel. In the run-up to this work with panes of colored glass, Knoebel also made “Basel Fenster 10 Ed. (Entwurf Nr. 8 von 12)” (Basel Window, 10 Editions, Design No. 8 of 12) from 2020. This work, consisting of pieces of painted plastic foil, became part of the collection of Museum Haus Konstruktiv after Knoebel’s solo exhibition “Guten Morgen, weisses Kätzchen” (Good Morning, White Kitten) was shown at the Museum in 2018.
Nina Arnold
Works by Imi Knoebel
![Basel Fenster 10 Ed. (Entwurf Nr. 8 von 12) [Basel window 10 ed., draft no. 8 of 12]](https://admin.hauskonstruktiv.ch/assets/objects/_1920xAUTO_crop_center-center_none_ns/240677_2023-06-19-111136_tbvy.jpg?w=10&h=10&q=50)