Imi Knoebel Linienbilder

The presentation in the ›Eifelraum‹ includes single works and a diptych from the so called »Linienbilder« series that the painter Imi Knoebel created between 1966 and 1968 while still at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and exhibited there for the first time during the final presentation in winter 1967/1968.

The legitimacy of painting was generally questioned in the 60s. Out of this void of pure possibilities, Imi Knoebel explored the classical panel painting and its inherent qualities with his series of paintings with lines: surface, format, structure and pictorial body.
For the series of works he used hardboard reinforced with roof battens, on which he stretched linen and drew lines on it with pen and ink. Vertical lines, horizontal lines, partly vertical and horizontal lines combined and also the thickness of the lines and the distances between the lines he varied continuously.
With his painting influenced by drawing, he structured and divided the pictorial surface, using positions from Modernism from Malevich to Minimal Art as his instruments.
In the exhibited diptych, the division extends beyond the pure picture surface and allows the wall, the space in between, to become part of the work. He also repeatedly experimented with the sides of the 4 to 5 cm deep picture bodies, painting the narrow sides with lines in some works. This makes it clear that Imi Knoebel was already working with the picture as an object at this time and understood it as an object-like image carrier.
In single works and series, the artist thus embarks on a research that, despite or precisely because of the restriction to white, black and the line, does not represent a reduction, but paradoxically opens up a wealth of diversity, an infinitely variable concept that stands for mobility and openness.

Starting with the Linienbildern, Imi Knobel’s œuvre leads to an arsenal of hard fiber paintings and frames, to projections, and later opens up to colored painting on wood and aluminum, always characterized by a minimalist-conceptual formal language. But the beginnings of his artistic path have not lost their relevance to this day, as Imi Knoebel himself confirms: »Yes, the beginnings! Only the beginnings, actually – after that everything is mixed up! […] The beginnings are concentrated up to Raum 19 and Batterie. They are the raison d’être for everything else.« (»I Wouldn‘t Say Anything Voluntarily Anyway!« Johannes Stüttgen in conversation with Imi Knoebel. In: Imi Knoebel. Works 1966-2014, exhibition catalog, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 2014, p. 30.)