3141
Winterauktionen 24.–25.11.2023
Knoebel, Imi i.e. Klaus Wolf
Born 1940 Dessau, lives and works in Düsseldorf.
Six original editions from the cycle «Pure Freude I (pure joy I)».
2005. Acrylic on plastic sheet. Verso each numbered lower right 10/12 as well as the individual sheets numbered «1», «3», «4», «5», «6» und «7» lower left. Sheet 7 additionally signed verso lower middle, dated «2..5 (2005)» as well as inscribed «112+164» lower right. Sheet 1 additionally numbered verso lower right 4/40 and sheet 4 additionally numbered verso lower right 12/10. Verso on the back of the frame each with a printed label with the work's data.
H 50, W 36 cm (sheet). Gallery frame.
Works from an edition of 12 numbered copies.
«Pure Freude» is a punk record label started in 1979 by the landlady of the Düsseldorf punk mecca «Ratinger Hof», artist's wife Carmen Knoebel. «Pure Freude» is the name of a patisserie run by the artist's daughters in Düsseldorf. But «Pure Freude» is also an edition that Imi Knoebel developed as a series since 2001/02, preceded by numerous designs of the same name.
The title «Pure Freude» makes one think of Paul Klee, whose «Theory of the Purity of Colour» defines it as that which remains when all units of measurement disappear. In Knoebel's «Pure Freude» each colour appears monochrome on one element of the overall composition. It thus gains an intensity and freedom that makes it appear autonomous in relation to every other colour in the picture.
Knoebel's role model, Kazimir Malevich, whose Black Square of 1915 is seen by the painter - Knoebel describes himself as a painter rather than an artist - as the origin of modern painting, proclaimed as early as the beginning of the 20th century that the most valuable thing in a creative work of painting is the colouring.
Provenance: private collection Freiburg i.Br.

Condition report