“When I am asked about what I think about when I look at a painting, I can only answer that I don’t think at all; I look at it and can only take in the beauty, and I don’t want to see it in relation to anything else. Only what I see, simply because it has its own validity.”

—Imi Knoebel

Imi Knoebel has been called “the last modernist”ⁱ

– his assemblages of hand-painted color fields draw inspiration from Kazimir Malevich’s suprematism and Piet Mondrian’s rectilinear designs. Even as minimalist investigations of color and form, Knoebel’s collages are assembled with the care of a craftsman, often revealing unpainted edges and visible brushstrokes that draw attention to his materials. The juxtaposition of color is important to Knoebel’s works, here pairing a series of yellow-orange fields with red and pink borders that seem to recede or rush forward depending on their arrangement. Knoebel, who originally worked in a significantly limited palette, began to experiment with vibrant hues following the death of his friend and gifted colorist Blinky Palermo.

Translating directly to ‘world soul’, the title of the Anima Mundi series references the intrinsic connection of all things, a sentiment that echoes the attitude of Joseph Beuys, Knoebel’s teacher and one of his biggest influences. Beuys argued that life and art could become one in the same, echoed in Knoebel’s commitment to humble materials in the service of high modernism, as well as his purist approach to color and form. Anima Mundi may also reference the interconnection between shape, color, and spatial relationships, all of which influence the careful balance of Knoebel’s work. This set of three related collages captures the artist’s commitment to serial experimentation, as well as the care with which he creates each of his formal arrangements.

ⁱ

Toby Kamps,

"Letter from Dusseldorf: A Conversation with Imi Knoebel,"

The Brooklyn Rail, April 2020, online.