Zion

Spanning nearly three metres in height and width, Imi Knoebel’s Zion is a monumental symphony of chromatic form. Knoebel signed and dated the reverse of the work with a looping signature of overlapping primary colours. Zion is divided into two orange halves, each covered with a rhythmic arrangement of painted bars in rose, navy, powder blue, and red. Uniting these sections is a colourful border that bounds the two rectangles together. Transcending the division between sculpture and painting, Knoebel used strips of metal to explore an endless variety of formal contrasts and affinities. Zion not only presents a complex choreography of tones, but also extends colour’s materiality into the third dimension, further nuanced by an elaborate play of light and shadow that react to the rising and waning sun. Long preoccupied with the encounter of colour and its material support, Knoebel’s abstractions respond to the legacy Kazimir Malevich, whose practice concentrated on the representation of geometric form and what he called ‘pure feeling’ (K. Malevich, ‘Suprematism’, 1927 reprinted in R. Herbert (ed), Modern Artists on Art: Ten Unabridged Essays, Ann Arbor, 1965, p. 120). Although rooted in these formal considerations of Modernism, Knoebel’s Day-Glo palette is more playful and loose than his predecessors. Funnelled through an eclectic array of influences, he forged a vivid visual language distinctly his own, producing serenely graphic works that reverberate with emotion. As Knoebel said when asked about his paintings, ‘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, quoted in J. Stüttgen, ‘“I wouldn’t Say Anything Voluntary Anyway!” Interview with Imi Knoebel’, Imi Knoebel: Works 1966- 2014, exh. cat., Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, p. 24). In Zion, Knoebel’s passionate, exacting approach results in a work of both coolness and warmth, suffused with the infinite potential of colour rendered as luminous form.