Imi Knoebel Paris K13, 2016

German artist Imi Knoebel (b. 1940) cites his discovery of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square (1915) as a watershed moment that liberated his conception of painting, giving him ‘the overwhelming feeling that I could start at nothing’. In Paris K13 (2016), as if responding to this discovery, Knoebel doubles up the Black Square form, slightly distorting the two iterations of the shape to create almost-squares which converge at one corner, forming a shaped ground that is visually reminiscent of Minimalist works by American artists such as Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly. Appearing as a flat monochrome plane from a distance, closer inspection reveals a rich texture and subtle variations in tone created through the artist’s generously layered brushwork.