拍品专文
Imi Knoebel, an important contributor to the founding of the Minimalist art movement, began his career at the Kunstsakademie Dusseldorf, where he studied under Joseph Beuys and Blinky Palermo. The effects of renowned colorist Johannes Itten’s teachings are evident too in the bright palette of Knoebel’s Rote Acryglaszeichnung Nr. 13, as with his work overall. The geometry of this particular work, as well as its reductive color palette, reflects the influences of Kazimir Malevich’s consistent application of the square shape and minimal use of color. According to the artist, he found Malevich’s 1915 Black Square liberating, providing him with “the overwhelming feeling that [he] could start at nothing” (I. Knoebel, quoted in K. Connolly, “Artist Imi Knoebel: ‘If you want to stay alive, you have to do something radical,’ The Guardian, 15 July 2015). When Knoebel was beginning his artistic career, he felt that everything had already been done–“Yves Klein has painted his canvas blue, Lucio Fontana has cut slashes into his. What’s left? If you want to do something, to stay alive, you have to think of something at least as radical” (Ibid.). The artist acknowledges that Malevich’s work provided him with the radical “something” he needed to begin.
For Rote Acryglaszeichnung Nr. 13, Knoebel utilizes the closest material to “nothing”–a clean piece of glass–manifesting it into an intimate exploration of the color red through minimal expression of hand and unconventional materiality. Knoebel recalls the painting tradition through the use of untraditional lacquer and acrylic on glass to further blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture, a common thread connecting Rote Acryglaszeichnung Nr. 13 with the rest of the artist’s body of work. Knoebel produces an ideological tension by challenging the transparency of the glass surface with the opacity of the layers of paint. Reminiscent of the ephemeral aesthetic and conceptual qualities of Joseph Beuys’ blackboard drawings and Cy Twombly’s blackboard paintings, Knoebel’s light artistic hand creates a texture that sets this work apart from the rest of the artist’s oeuvre.
For Rote Acryglaszeichnung Nr. 13, Knoebel utilizes the closest material to “nothing”–a clean piece of glass–manifesting it into an intimate exploration of the color red through minimal expression of hand and unconventional materiality. Knoebel recalls the painting tradition through the use of untraditional lacquer and acrylic on glass to further blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture, a common thread connecting Rote Acryglaszeichnung Nr. 13 with the rest of the artist’s body of work. Knoebel produces an ideological tension by challenging the transparency of the glass surface with the opacity of the layers of paint. Reminiscent of the ephemeral aesthetic and conceptual qualities of Joseph Beuys’ blackboard drawings and Cy Twombly’s blackboard paintings, Knoebel’s light artistic hand creates a texture that sets this work apart from the rest of the artist’s oeuvre.