Imi Knoebel   German | born 1940  

 

Imi Knoebel was born in Dessau in 1940. He studied under Jospeh Beuys at the Staatliche Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf, where he still resides and has his converted warehouse studio. His paintings are resolutely formal, exploring the power of colour in ways that continue the gestures and investigations of Modernism.  

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In 2013 Imi Knoebel designed, constructed and painted a series of three tables or ‘Tische’. One of the tables consists of three separate elements and two of them are made up of two elements. Individual elements can function as smaller tables in addition to the predefined jigsaw puzzle-like whole.

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The tables clearly exhibit Knoebel’s trademark shapes, colours and materials. The thickness and contours of the table tops are reminiscent of his wall-based objects and their construction employs the same techniques.

Knoebel applied the bold colours by hand with brushes, thus allowing his painterly style to reveal itself. Knoebel intended these tables to be used, however, so the surfaces were coated to make them scratch-proof.

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The group of three tables were first exhibited in a solo show, Mahlzeit, at Galerie Bärbel Grässlin, Frankfurt in 2014. In 2015 they were included in the major retrospective, Imi Knoebel, Works 1966-2014, at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in Germany.

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To launch the new Rocket premises in April 2015 Jonathan Stephenson invited Imi Knoebel to contribute to the opening exhibition, Finished | Applied, and he generously lent Tisch 3 from his personal collection.