„19 Farben 19 Stäbe“, 1993/2013

Knoebel, a master of abstraction, walks the fine line between painting and sculpture in his work. While his early works were often black and white, he began to integrate colour into his work after the death of Blinky Palermo at the end of the 1970s. His works, even the smaller formats, attract the eye with their brilliant colours and incorporate the space. His works are layers of individual elements that he combines in ever new variations. For Knoebel, the interaction of form, colour and materiality is not only a precondition for his own work, but for art in general. Knoebel loosens up the formal rigour of his role models, the Russian Suprematist Kazimir Malevich and the Dutch Constructivist Piet Mondrian, with playful lightness.