Russische Wand

In 1962, Kazimir Malevich’s text Suprematism – The Non-Objective World, written 40 years earlier, was published in German. The Russian painter’s polemic path away from figurative painting and his arguments for non-objective art fascinated Imi Knoebel even during his student years. The young artist particularly admired Malevich’s austerity, clarity and decisiveness, and he adopted these qualities in his own formal idiom. In this context, from the late 1960s onward, he produced works that exhibit a strict design principle and can clearly be understood as a homage to Kazimir Malevich. These include the the body of works Russische Wand, designed in 1968 and produced as an edition set 20 years later.