Imi Knoebel

Imi Knoebel (born in 1940) is perhaps the most important exponent of minimal art in Germany.

A student of Beuys, very early on he was able to stretch and expand the concept of art, almost making it a visual language and distancing him from both his teacher and his fellow students at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, including the likes of Jörg Immendorff and Katharina Sieverding.

Knoebel layers wood and metal surfaces coated with paint on top of each other, producing objects that liven up rooms with their vividness. Alongside this kind of collage he also works in an almost contradictory way, “slicing” surfaces into smaller elements that then reach out into the room with their plurality and their dispersion. These concepts by Imi Knoebel appear in his room-filling installations, his objects and his graphic editions on paper.