An oeuvre encompassing more than five decades of creation makes Imi Knoebel, born in 1940, an exceptional representative of radical non-objective painting and a key protagonist of German Minimal Art. Inspired by the works of Malevich, he explores the relationships between space, form, and color in his art. However, as a student of Joseph Beuys at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1964 to 1971 and captivated by his teacher's belief that painting as a genre was obsolete and should be regarded as over, Knoebel's art soon saw a radical turn when he began to understand this medium as the sum of all artistic disciplines, considering himself a painter while rarely using brush and canvas for his work. He also repeatedly revisits earlier works by supplementing, expanding, or reinterpreting them. In his precise and distinct compositions, he allows materials like hardboard, aluminum, paper, and paint to speak for themselves, so that his paintings and two-dimensional sculptures, as well as the individual elements of his installations, can enter into an open dialogue with their surroundings. For this purpose, the artist explores materiality, two- and three-dimensionality, and contrived or incidental spatial principles. Over the years, he created assemblages and drawings, silhouettes, and small and large-format works with monochrome or polychrome compositions. Imi Knoebel made his first major artistic statement with austere and sparse "line paintings" on hardboard. At the end of the 1960s, Imi Knoebel condensed the line and clarified his geometric black-and-white shapes into black-and-white squares, black-and-white crosses, red diamonds, rectangles, and polygons. He reconsiders the stringency of using unfinished hardboard panels that he puts together as cubes and other minimalist forms, condensing them into spatial sculptural bodies using roof battens and stretcher bars. With the use of painted surfaces, he creates “specific objects” (Donald Judd) such as “Raum 19” (1968, Dia Art Foundation) or “Genter Raum” (1980, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen). He aims to go beyond the boundaries of the genre and conquer space.

The present work is also steeped in Imi Knoebel's work method, demonstrating his exploration of form, color surface, and a wall. Just as a picture can be pieced together in Knoebel's artistic and technical sense, it can also be dismantled into its components, creating structures that each bear their pictorial function. Thus the shape of the work “Kadmium Red R” can accommodate all the forms and conceivable possibilities of an irregular square. And yet it evokes an impression of a loose, impulsive cluster of six strictly cut fragments of different sizes. However, the whole ensemble appears less loosely composed than it might seem at first glance. It consists of six parts that are quite distinct, yet their stringent monochromaticity and sharp contours indicate that they are formally related. The selected color, a rich cadmium red, creates a visual effect of a strong color that stands out and emphasizes the difference between the individual panels. The seemingly random arrangement of six forms above and next to one another in a slight curve with a noticeable slope to the right also creates a strong impression of a coherent picture. With their rich color, the fragments impressively hover in front of the wall. [MvL]