WHAT
Born in Germany, the artist studied under Joseph Beuys at Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, and began his career-long exploration of the expressive potential of art’s fundamental building blocks – line, form, colour and material. As a student, he was inspired by Kazimir Malevich’s theory of Suprematism, which rejected all representational imagery in favour of the ‘supremacy of pure artistic feeling’.  Ranging from geometric to freeform, from monochrome to multiple colours, the artworks are inspired by his hands-on studio experiments rather than any overarching programme.

WHY
Knoebel considers himself a student of Russian artist, Kazimir Malevich, who is widely regarded as creating modern art’s first entirely abstract work. Today, at 82, Knoebel creates an ever-evolving flow of nonobjective works. ‘When I am asked about what I think when I look at a painting’ Knoebel has said, ‘I can only answer that I don’t think at all; I look at it and can only take in the beauty, and I don’t want to see it in relation to anything else. Only what I see, simply because it has its own validity.’