Spanning almost 2.5 metres across, Imi Knoebel’s ONNDON (2004) is a symphony of precise form and captivating colour. It consists of a window-like arrangement of four squares, painted in acrylic on two aluminium panels. The top left square is shimmering aquamarine, overlaid with a grid of pinks, purples, black, red and cobalt blue. The square below it is glossy black with deep blue undertones; the two right-hand squares are shrouded in matt inky tones. At the border of each, an underlying lattice of bright tones can be glimpsed. Playing with colour in this strict rectilinear format, Knoebel explores an endless variety of formal contrasts and affinities. ONNDON's complex tonal configuration seems to extend play into the third dimension, as colours are foregrounded or inset by their place within its system of contrasting textures, grids and panes; the gleam of aluminium behind translucent pigment creates the illusion of pool-like depth. Knoebel’s complex and immersive work is carried by a decisive structural clarity, taking a celebration of colour into what he sees as the supreme and self-justifying domain of pure beauty.
Preoccupied with the encounter of colour and its material support, Knoebel’s geometric abstraction builds on the legacy of Mondrian and Malevich with an eclectic and cerebral range of influences. First came the Bauhaus ideas of the Darmstadt Werkkunstschule, where he learnt the colour theories of László Moholy-Nagy and Johannes Itten in 1962. It was here that he met fellow artist Rainer Giese, who shared his obsession with Malevich: the two even emulated the Suprematist by shaving their heads and wearing long, unfastened capes and laceless shoes. They named themselves Imi & Imi – an abbreviation of Ich mit ihm (‘I with him’) and also the name of an East German detergent that bore the slogan ‘a guarantee for uncompromising purity’. In the same punning spirit, Onndon is likely a contraction of ‘On and on’, reflecting the potential infinity of the work’s composition. Imi & Imi’s radical, tongue-in-cheek approach was enough to convince Joseph Beuys to admit the duo in 1964 to his classes at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie, where Knoebel later met his friend Blinky Palermo.
From this distinguished and wide-ranging education, Knoebel forged a vivid, clear-sighted outlook that is distinctively his own. Soon entering his ninth decade, he continues to produce works of luminous graphic force and serene emotive resonance. ONNDON's gaps and borders show us how it is made, yet this sense of deconstruction only heightens its optical magic. What we see is everything: Knoebel’s ambition for his work, he says, is ‘Simply that it goes, to bring things to a point of lightness. That’s the most difficult place to get to with painting. The work that went into it shouldn’t show. Beauty always lies in between’ (I. Knoebel quoted in D. Luckow, ‘Imi Knoebel’, 1993-94, Journal of Contemporary Art, http://www.jca-online.com/knoebel.html).
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