The works of Imi Knoebel are riddles. They are kind of rebuses, that one would like to decipher, especially the new ones and those from the Etcetera series. Although they seem to be fully abstract, and are made with the very fast, spontaneous expressive brushstrokes, they hold “signs” and precise shapes, lines and colours. They reveal Knoebel’s consistent continuous process: self-referential and autobiographical forms and protocols, having source in the 1960’s and onwards, that reappear in various series, offering them new lives. Eponymous Etcetera is suggestive of repeating, listing analogous things, subsequent future actions, just like in writing or saying: etc, etc. In this case, it has deeply existential meaning: it is showing the direction, the end of the process, one could say “Sein-zum-Tode”. The direction was from the crucial Hartfaserbilder (Hardboard Paintings) and hardboard installations: the play-woods or Masonite without any colour, those referencing existing shapes (e.g. Raum 19 windows, this famous Kunstakademie Düsseldorf atelier’s details and real dimensions, 1968), through the introduction of colour in the quasi-paintings panels (e.g. 24 Farben – für Blinky Palermo, 1977), through direct references to Malevich, Mondrian and Knoebel’s wife Carmen (e.g. Für Piet, Kasimir, und Carmen, 1981), to the more recent ones (including oval, geometrical, or irregular cut-outs) that are non-referential, in Knoebel’s words: this way “leads to the free forms” (freie Formen). One can understand this “etcetera Linie” better, whilst visiting his amazing Düsseldorf atelier in Heerstrasse, where he has been working from the 1970’s and in which he did all of his major works (including later version of Raum 19). This giant studio is not a factory – although it occupies the whole building and several floors. Knoebel works over years with very few permanent collaborators, mostly also artists. There, it is clear that all colours of paints are made by himself (given his numbers and notes on hundreds of jars), one can see that he works with many types of brushes (also organized in a very precise way, hung on the wall-shelve), and one can see how the large aluminium panels are cut and constructed, to have “uneven” edges and irregularities. All works are produced there. It reminds old ethos of the artist’s studio, where everything is really made by hands. Big scale aluminium works are made in parallel to the smaller ones, e.g. those he calls “love children”, but also in parallel to the Etcetera works painted directly on a shiny surface of aluminium (majority of them, also cut-out in uneven way), and in other cases: painted analogically on a mat surface of the “plastic paper”, how Knoebel calls it.

Currently, he is also working on an imaginary alphabet (in Knoebel’s words: “analphabet”) series, in which compositions resemble constructivist letters-signs, among those only few could be read, guess or decipher. Some of them are also paying a visit in Etcetera works, in a mysterious variant of a quasi-spontaneous “automatic writing”, including: Etcetera L, Etcetera LV, Etcetera CXIV, and many of those from 2023–2024. Surprisingly, this serial painterly brush-strokes works and their fast drawn lines looking like sketches, havealso connotation with formal concerns Knoebel had addressed in his earliest works (e.g. Linienbilder) related to Bauhaus legacy, which was his primary education while taking Vorkurs by Johannes Itten in Werkkunstschule in Darmstadt, together with his friend Imi Giese (and before they decided to join Joseph Beuys class in Kunstakademie Düsseldorf proposing him taking over Raum 19 as their exclusive studio, which made them famous). The Bauhaus Vorkurs in Darmstadt was focused on workshop-based design practices and use of unusual combinations of a given medium or material. Knoebel’s teacher, Hans Hoffmann-Lederer, himself a former student of the original Bauhaus program, “involved exercises that stressed the repeated rendering of certain basic forms”, according to Colin Lang’s (not yet published) monograph of Raum 19. “Rather than create their own designs as they might have done in a fine arts program, here Knoebel and Giese were given a rigorous and structured program of applied design training that consisted primarily of rudimentary drawing exercises. In keeping with the principles of the Bauhaus Vorkurs, Knoebel and Giese spent the majority of their time at the Werkkunstschule mastering the typology of the basic formal elements of design through drawing”, says Lang.

Why not to look then at the Etcetera series in this “line”. Moreover, starting from 1968, Knoebel made enormous set of drawing exercises compiled in the 250.000 Zeichnungen (250,000 Drawings), made between 1968–1973. It was a series of elemental drawings of single lines repeated over separate sheets of papers that were stored and later displayed in large cabinets. In the first public presentation at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in 1975, most of the visitors had no idea that the cabinets could actually be opened to reveal folders with drawings (250.000 Zeichnungen), but, as recalls Lang: “For Knoebel these structures housed an archive of prior instruction now conceived as an inventory of possible forms”.

Analogous archive is nowadays accessible in many drawers at the Knoebel’s Heerstrasse atelier. The inventory of the Etcetera forms, could be concluded by the one very special and recent painting on aluminum hanging there nearby on the wall. It is dedicated to the most important person and a major collaborator and many years manager, his wife Carmen Knoebel, made as a birthday gift. It is titled Das Bild meiner Bilder (The Image of My Images) which literally depicts his former historical works from 1960’s until present – as symbols: line, grid, cube, oval, etc.

Biography: Imi Knoebel was born Klaus Wolf Knoebel in 1940 in Dessau, Germany. In the early 1960s, Knoebel attended the Arts and Crafts School in Darmstadt and formed a friendship with Rainer Giese. Together, they adopted the pseudonym IMI, which stood for “Ich Mit Ihm” (I with him). From 1964-1971, Knoebel attended the Düsseldorf Art Academy, where he studied under Joseph Beuys, and also met and became close friends with Blinky Palermo.

Knoebel’s oeuvre includes a range of mediums—drawing, photography, light projections, sculpture and painting—focuses primarily on the interplay of color, material, and form. Selection of solo shows and projects: Sammlung Goetz, Munich, DE (2022); Dia:Beacon, New York, NY (2021); FARB – Forum Altes Rathaus Borken, Borken, DE (2020); Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz, LI (2020); Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, CH (2018); Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden, Wuppertal, DE (2017); Musée National Fernand Léger, Biot, FR (2016); Kunstsammlung NRW K21 Ständehaus, Düsseldorf, DE (2015); Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld, DE (2015); Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, DE (2014); Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, DE (2013); Stained glass windows for the Notre-Dame in Reims, FR (2011); Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag, NL (2010); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, DE (2009), Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, DE (2009); Dia:Beacon, New York, NY (2008); Wilhelm-Hack- Museum, Ludwigshafen, DE (2007); Retrospective 1968–1996: Haus der Kunst, Munich, DE; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, NL; IVAM Centre del Carme, Valencia, ES; Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, DE; Musée de Grenoble, FR (1996–1997). Imi Knoebel participated in documenta in Kassel in 1972, 1977, 1982, and 1987. His works can be found in many renowned museum collections all over the world, including the Bayrische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, DE; Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, NL; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, FR; Dia:Beacon, New York, NY; FNAC, Paris, FR, Fundação de Serralves, Porto, PT; Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, NL; Kunstmuseum Basel, CH; MoMA Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY; Reina Sofa, Madrid, ES; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; and Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota, JP

Barbara Piwowarska