Imi Knoebel

Imi Knoebel is one of the most important European representatives of non-representational art, and he has devoted a lifetime to developing it. Around 1966, his first work was influenced by Kazimir Malevich's paintings and by Joseph Beuys, who taught him.Layering, sequencing, and stacking became his trademark techniques once he discovered masonite and its potential for creating large three-dimensional work. However, Knoebel also adopted a constrasting approach by producing extremely pared-down images which have no material form, to represent the immaterial.This catalogue of the exhibition (Imi Knoebel: Kernstücke (Key Works), at Kunstmuseum Krefeld, Museum Haus Esters, 22 March - 23 August 2015) provides a concentrated review of his early years; a newly-created complex of his works provides an insight into the essence of his multi-form work.English and German text.

Imi Knoebel, one of the most important contemporary abstract painters, has concentrated for over 15 years on the primary colours of blue, yellow and red; these have a similar architectural function to that of foundation stones. Based on the artist's proposal – an abstract composition of these colours – in 2008 Knoebel received a commission to design six church windows for the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Reims.These have been inaugurated in June 2011 in this high Gothic cathedral where the French kings were crowned. This opulent volume provides both a richly colourful documentation and an in-depth description of the entire project, which, following the tradition of Marc Chagall and Brigitte Simon who both designed church windows, creates a fascinating symbiosis between the old and the new.

This book considers the history of Do It Yourself art, music and publishing, demonstrating how DIY strategies have transitioned from being marginal, to emergent, to embedded. Through secondary research, observation and 30 original interviews, each chapter analyses one of 15 creative cities (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dusseldorf, New York, London, Manchester, Cologne, Washington DC, Detroit, Berlin, Glasgow, Olympia (Washington), Portland (Oregon), Moscow and Istanbul) and assesses the contemporary situation in each in the post-subcultural era of digital and internet technologies. The book challenges existing subcultural histories by examining less well-known scenes as well as exploring DIY "best practices" to trace a template of best approaches for sustainable, independent, locally owned creative enterprises.

The original edition of this ambitious reference was published in hardcover in 1998, in two oversize volumes (10x13"). This edition combines the two volumes into one; it's paperbound ("flexi-cover"--the paper has a plastic coating), smaller (8x10", and affordable for art book buyers with shallower pockets--none of whom should pass it by. The scope is encyclopedic: half the work (originally the first volume) is devoted to painting; the other half to sculpture, new media, and photography. Chapters are arranged thematically, and each page displays several examples (in color) of work under discussion. The final section, a lexicon of artists, includes a small bandw photo of each artist, as well as biographical information and details of work, writings, and exhibitions. Ruhrberg and the three other authors are veteran art historians, curators, and writers, as is editor Walther. c. Book News Inc.

Born in Dessau in 1940, Imi Knoebel is a leading figure of 1960s abstraction. He was a student in Joseph Beuys' master class when he began to seriously question the role of the image in painting, and by 1968 he had formulated the foundation of his practice in the seminal installation "Raum 19," which has continued to influence his work. Working in between painting and sculpture, Knoebel layers individual elements which are repeatedly juxtaposed in ever-changing variations. Over the course of his nearly five decade-long career, he has continually moved between intuition and calculation, always finding innovative ways to investigate geometric form and color. This precise retrospective volume with comprehensive texts by Dirk Martin, Johannes Stüttgen and Franz-Joachin Verspohl, among others, presents a grouping of works, made between 1966 and 2006, that were chosen by Knoebel for their fundamental importance in his practice.