"If you want to stay alive, you have to do something radical."
Imi Knoebel (b. 1940, Desau, Germany) is a pivotal figure in postwar German abstraction, known for a radical and experimental practice that fuses painting, sculpture, and architecture. His work represents a rigorous investigation into the fundamental elements of art: color, form, surface, and material. Drawing on the legacy of Kazimir Malevich and Joseph Beuys, Knoebel pursues a purity of expression, rejecting representation and ideology in favor of intuitive explorations of form and material.
Knoebel’s artistic language is resolutely abstract but deeply expressive: minimalist forms such as squares, rectangles, and parallelograms are built from industrial materials (fiberboard, aluminum, plywood, and unused stretcher bars) and painted with flat industrial hues or with vivid color applied gesturally. His early breakthrough, Raum 19 (1968), exemplifies his enduring commitment to the intersection of object, space, and viewer. Over time, his practice expanded from stark white reliefs and light projections to vibrant color compositions and large-scale installations, including monumental stained glass windows for Reims Cathedral (2011–2015).
Moving between gestural spontaneity and geometric precision, Knoebel creates works that are rigorously formal and emotionally charged. His shaped panels and modular constructions, though abstract and non-narrative, engage in a subtle dialogue with human perception, architecture, and the conditions of the surrounding space. Knoebel offers a vision of abstraction that continues the Constructivist pursuit of puristic, architectural, and reductive forms while also crafting compositions that emphasize the viewer’s aesthetic experience of color and beauty.