Jeppe Curth: 0:00

Hi and welcome to the Collector's Edge from Nordic Art Partners. In this episode, we will explore the work and career of Imi Neubel, a German artist known for his unique forms and colors. With me today is, as usual, our arts expert, niklas Robinson, and I'm your host, eppe Curth. Let's get started.

Nicholas Robinson: 0:21

It is with Alex Rotter, at 400 million Selling here at Christie's 400 million dollars is the bid and the piece is sold. We've all heard about it. Sometimes it's front page news Important works of art are being sold for incredible sums of money. But can you get involved and become a part of the exclusive club yourself, and how do you get started while avoiding buying the wrong things? That's exactly what this podcast is about. This is the Collector's Edge from Nordic Art Partners, a podcast for those of you interested in the mechanics of the art industry, want advice about putting money into art, or simply want to buy something for your walls, to beautify your surroundings. Whatever your objectives, it is possible to put money into art wisely, to be considered, thoughtful and well informed in your choices and actions. Welcome to the art of collecting with an eye for curated beauty and practical value.

Jeppe Curth: 1:27

Hi, Nick, good morning, . How are you doing? Very well, thank you you. Yeah, I'm good. It's been a long time since we last sat down and spoke about an artist.

Nicholas Robinson: 1:38

True, We've been traveling and going to some art fairs and so on and so forth. So back in the office I almost said back in the studio, but obviously our office is our studio.

Jeppe Curth: 1:51

Yeah, and it's not because we don't have artists to talk about, we're just sometimes busy. Yes, that's how it is. But, as I just mentioned in the intro, we're going to talk about Immigreable today. Yes, we are. Can you, as always, give us a little tour back in his early days and how he became an artist?

Nicholas Robinson: 2:10

uh, sure, I think probably we'll. We should do what, what we usually do, and that's just give a bit of biographical context. To start with. Yes, please, before we talk about his education and his work, etc. Et cetera, et cetera. Um, and he was born in 1940, uh in Dessau, uh, dessau being notable as the site of the original Bauhaus, founded in 1918. Um, so of course that makes him 84 years old. Um. For all you mathematics aficionados, um in uh.

Nicholas Robinson: 2:45

When he was five years old, he was in Dresden, um at the towards the culmination of the second world war, uh, where he witnessed the fire bombing of the um of the city. Um and uh a few years later, in 1950, um his, his, he. He was one of five children in total, and at the end of the war his father abandoned them. So his mother raising five children, after five years of the sort of post-war Soviet occupation, she started to become extremely concerned as to what life under a communist regime would look like, um, and so they fled. They fled to west germany, um, and he remembers uh running through the fields in the dead of night with the sound of the border guard dogs sort of barking at their heels, as he describes it. So, anyway, he settled in the West and then, I guess at some point during his childhood, his formative years, he decided that he wanted to become an artist. Should we talk about what his work is like? Should we talk about his? I guess we should talk about his education, maybe.

Jeppe Curth: 4:07

Yeah, I think if you could tell us a bit about his art education and what formative influence he has on the work we know from him, maybe also a little bit about the Bauhaus.

Nicholas Robinson: 4:18

Okay, okay, that's fair enough. I mean, of course he was not attending the Bauhaus, but it's kind of pertinent, or the philosophies around the Bauhaus become pertinent when we think of the things that he was taught at art school. But I guess, just to summarize his work generally, he's always been very dedicated to a purely non-representational form of art, purely non-representational form of art. He's one of these artists who's been very resolute in his abstraction concerning form, which in his case is articulated predominantly by line, by color, but also by material, and these are themes that he has experimented with throughout his working life in series. He's always aimed to uncover the basic material elements of art and had been inspired by especially the work of Mondrian Malevich, both of whom were innovators and proponents of the very first highly formal theories of abstraction in the early 20th century, more theories of abstraction in the early 20th century. So anyway, in 1962, he attended the Werkundschule in Darmstadt, and the key factor here in his education was the course which was very closely based on the what was called the preliminary course at the Bauhaus, and this was formulated by two particular professors there, one of whom was Johannes Itten and the other was Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Now, Itten had various philosophies surrounding color and became a bit of a sort of a mystical figure. So he was very interested in the spiritual properties of color and so on and so forth. But in 1922, I believe he was replaced by Moholy-Nagy who had a much more well, who had a much more um sort of constructivist leaning uh towards color and composition. Um, anyway, the foundation course uh, the, the preliminary course, as formulated by Itten and refined by Moholy-Nagy, looked at various theories about color and looked at contrast amongst color, by hue, by value, by temperature, by saturation. So they had very specific intellectual theories on composition and painting and this highly didactic approach. Um was the course essentially that knobel was taught in darmstadt. So he had this founding uh in essentially in in bauhaus way of thinking about color and composition. So you can trace his education in this direct lineage.

Nicholas Robinson: 7:07

After this he attended the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf and this was a little bit interesting because the teacher at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf was Joseph Beuys and Joseph Beuys was sort of this monumental figure in German post-war art and the way that Knobel tells it. He had to persuade Beuys to enroll him in the course. He had a very close friend Knobel um called uh called reina gisa um, and they were this sort of two peas in a pod kind of uh friends. They called themselves immy and immy, which was a little bit of a way that they kind of branded themselves or identified themselves. Um, and the way they described it, uh, the way he describes he's he.

Nicholas Robinson: 8:02

He said that he saw in a newspaper that Boyce had been attacked, um, at an art opening. So he read this uh article in the newspaper, saw the photograph of the bloodied nose of this artist and was very fascinated by what had prompted people to react so strongly to his work, to the extent that they attacked him. So he sort of they felt compelled that they had to sort of help this man, Although of course what that would mean to them is unclear. But so they packed their bags, they hitched hike to Dusseldorf and they managed to get an audience somehow with Joseph Beuys and the way that Knoebel tells it. He says we had absolutely no talent, but we mustered the courage to approach him. When there's two of you you only need half the courage. And we told him we didn't want to show our art, we just wanted him to give us a room of our own. He was both taken aback and sold on our cheekiness. So, basically, Boyce gave them a place to work. He gave them a room called Raum 19, room 19, next door to his own classroom, in room 20. He basically gave them a year to prove themselves. He said here you go, here's a space in which to work. Justify why you should still be here in a year's time, and you have all this time to formulate something to do that would enable you to deserve to stay here.

Nicholas Robinson: 9:31

So the first thing that Knoebel did, or the first major body of work that he formulated although I guess before we talk about his actual work, we should talk about his, maybe a little bit about his struggle to become an artist. I think that a lot of artists, probably when they're making very especially, very rigidly reductive abstract works, it's very difficult to find a way to map out new territory. To find a way to map out new territory, You're dealing with very sort of pared back means of making a painting. So it's a little bit difficult to know where you can take the medium. And Knovel was no different.

Nicholas Robinson: 10:18

Initially he was a little tortured by the sense that he could not find a way to do something that had not already been done. He noted that Klein had his monochromes and his international Klein blue. He noted that Fontana had mapped out the slashes as a way of, you know, interrogating the pictorial surface, and he felt you know what's left. If you want to do something to stay alive, you have to think of something at least as radical. And he wasn't sure what that might look like for him. And he always but then he always would refer to his discovery of Malevich's Black Square of 1915 as a very seminal moment in his own understanding of what art could be. And he always said that considering the painting gave him an overwhelming feeling that I could start at nothing. So when he made his first body of work, his first significant piece, this is what he did.

Nicholas Robinson: 11:23

So Room 19 is the name given to this piece of work that he formulated during this 12 months of his studenthood in Dusseldorf, and this piece consists of 77 elements of wood and masonite. So think of all of the things that look like. They are the sort of raw materials of a painting Stretchers, frames, various planar support surfaces. So Knoebel is assembling these things, reducing the core elements of painting to its very essence, distilling it into its basic constituent components of form, material surface and the way they coexist in space. But the interesting thing is that no actual paint is part of this work. So because you have this sort of very obvious physicality to these elements, he's bringing painting very close to the phenomenology of sculpture.

Nicholas Robinson: 12:28

And the interesting thing about this group of paintings which of course are not really paintings is that there's no fixed set of relationships that binds these components, since room 19 can be arranged in any kind of variation, any kind of permutation, stacked together, arranged so it can be composed to sort of fill a certain specific space, composed within that space, so to speak, or it can be densely compacted as if it were simply stored away somewhere. So it's sort of maybe an autobiographic reference to an art student's basic materials, but as an installation it's really a conceptual exercise in reduction, pairing the work of art back to its most basic physical elements. So this is his attitude towards you. Know how can I make a painting? That is the very essence of a painting and a way of making something, maybe, that had not been made before.

Jeppe Curth: 13:28

Can you say that Knobel's work are often seen as a dialogue between a painting and a sculpture?

Nicholas Robinson: 13:36

Yes, they have a very specific sort of physical property, partly due to his interest in materials.

Jeppe Curth: 13:43

Could you try?

Nicholas Robinson: 13:44

to describe how they could look like in terms of yeah, of course, I mean another group of works that he made in his early days. Between 1966, which of course predates his studies in Dusseldorf and 1973, he made 250,000 A4 drawings, all executed in pencil, with various vertical horizontal lines on them, and this was exhibited in six high, narrow steel cupboards, all of which are sealed and only accessible on demand. So here you have abstract work that also has a sort of a performative element in its physicality. It functions as sculpture, it functions as installation and it functions as also a highly conceptual exercise. Um, but continuing his, his, his very key concept, concept of dematerializing the medium of painting.

Nicholas Robinson: 14:36

Um, in 1968, uh, knirble was the of Beuys' students to incorporate photography in his work.

Nicholas Robinson: 14:44

So he started using a slide projector and he would take the slides and he would just have these empty slides, whatever the acetate or acrylic or whatever the little plastic square is, and he would put these slides in the projector and he would create squares of light that were essentially the empty slide projected onto a wall.

Nicholas Robinson: 15:09

So this is, of course, putting a composition on a wall which of course is akin to a painting, but obviously there's this conceptual, this kind of sculptural, performative element to it too, sculptural, performative element to it too. These later evolved into slides that were covered in copy ink, onto which he carved very precise vertical horizontal lines which were then cast throughout the room. And this, this very, very reductive form of exploring form, line and form, evolved into his black and white paintings, and these were very simple paintings consisting of black and white abstract works, essentially, that play with various combinations of rectangular forms on their surface. So extremely simple and extremely pared back. But our understanding of Knoebel, of course and of course this also relates back to the first course that he was taught, the Bauhaus course on color theory, etc. We associate his work today with very sophisticated explorations of color right, yes, especially the Anima Mundi works.

Jeppe Curth: 16:23

But these works you just mentioned, are they essential for understanding his artistic vision, or is there maybe also other group of works that's important?

Nicholas Robinson: 16:35

perhaps what we more readily associate with his work today and you mentioned the Anima Mundi works which are, you know, a very kind of sophisticated essay that perhaps represents a culmination of all of these different concerns and considerations that he considers relevant to the practice, to the discipline of painting. But before he made those, we have to discover his, we have to understand his discovery and his use of colour. Now, he was part of a great generation of German artists that all kind of came up together exploring painting in somewhat similar, of course also different ways, similar, of course, also different ways. But in 1977, he experienced a significant trauma with the death of his very close friend, blinky Palermo. And after Blinky died he began to systematically experiment with colour and he made a very key work in response to Blinky's death.

Nicholas Robinson: 17:43

Now Palermo had become known as quite a sophisticated colorist. His paintings most often are, or his work is most often noted for these paintings that consist of these three horizontal bands of color that have some kind of relation to each other. So there's a certain harmony in them. So there's a certain harmony in them, but there's also a certain awkwardness in the way these colors, these tones relate to each other, very sort of hard edged, flat passages of color. So they really just kind of look like flags, you might say, and not like paintings at all.

Nicholas Robinson: 18:20

But Palermo had been considered quite a sophisticated colourist. So Knoebel's response to this sort of highly significant moment, he sort of turned a profound personal loss into a kind of artistic legacy from Palermo to him. And so this body of work that he made in response to Palermo's death 24 Colors for Blinky consists of 24 irregular sort of polygon shapes, funny kind of cutouts that defy a particular description or categorization, each with a solid color on the surface, and and, and this, this, this work, only really functions if you kind of stand in the middle and consider all of these shapes and colors. Um, resonating together becomes a very sort of experiential way to perceive color and form. This is now part of the permanent collection at dear beacon so imi is 84 years old today.

Jeppe Curth: 19:36

Yeah, um, and you just walked us through many of the different series he made through his whole career. Which one do you?

Nicholas Robinson: 19:42

prefer. Well, I think that for me, the well. I guess we I suppose we haven't gotten to that point yet in our talk For me, I think that his essays in colour are my personal favourites and what I think probably will end up being his most significant legacy I mean the early historic works will always be that probably will end up being his most significant legacy. I mean the early historic works will always be that, just because of their, you know the significance of their importance to the development of his work. But I think his work of the last you know, 20, 30 years is more significant because it incorporates all of these elements in a more rounded way. And I think I mean we can't overstate the importance of color to Knoebel. I mean, today he's got more than 700 color cards arranged in his studio. All of them are highly ordered on these sort of hooks in his studio, each one on a hook adjacent to the next one, very, you know, closely related tones in this spectrum, looking like the keys on some kind of crazy monumental xylophone. So so so the nuance of color and the relationship of tones to other tones is something that he obviously thinks about constantly, and since the 1990s when he has begun to paint on aluminium. I think that the combination of this sort of very industrial material surface support with the painting that he makes on top to me make the most interesting works, and for me the works that he's made, a lot of these aluminium works from the nineties, or that he started in the nineties. He still makes them today. Um, they have a sort of a anthropomorphic or biomorphic shape to them. So they're, they're kind of an irregular, um, irregular form, um. And then the surface is painted, often in a in a monochrome, but sometimes with expressive gestural elements in slightly related or contrasting tones too, um, so you get quite a lot of variations of the same color in complimentary shades or tones, and the these, these marks are applied in this very sort of feathered brushy way which has a lot of expression in it, um. So so you have the shaped ground that superficially is reminiscent of minimalist works by americans such as eltwith kelly or frank steller, um, but the surface differs very markedly in that knurbel's works much more clearly retain the hand of the artist in the gestural way the paint is applied to the surface. So these paintings become about the material and the surface support, but also very much about the configurations of brushstrokes on the surface which are incredibly subtle but also still quite expressive and quite visceral. So I think that these are a very significant body of work that Knoebel has made.

Nicholas Robinson: 22:52

And then another series that I think is highly significant and I think probably the market generally agrees, are the Anima Mundi works. Probably the market generally agrees are the Anima Mundi works. Now, anima Mundi, very loosely translated, means, or very literally translated, means, soul of the world. But for Knoebel I think we can infer that this is a certain kind of artistic soul of the world and the very, you know, the very sort of pure response to form and colour and the way these two elements sort of interact with each other.

Nicholas Robinson: 23:25

Um, and each of these Anima Mundi works, very simple, consists of a rectangular aluminum panel and each one has a sort of a strip on the top functioning as a framing device around the central rectangle, and each of these panels is between sort of 35 and 40 centimetres tall. And these works are configured in groups of one, two, three, four and five panels and these are hung in a row, horizontal row, on the wall so that these various panels relate to their siblings in any given group. And a few minutes ago I spoke about the dimensions of these individual panels being between, I think, 35 and 40 centimeters, the reason that there's a small range between them with any individual group of Anima Mundi works. So if it's a three-panel work or a two-panel work or a five-panel work, each of those panels within any given work is the same, are the same size, but the dimensions vary very slightly from one group to another group, and this is so that none of the individual panels could ever be sort of inadvertently mistaken or switched out for any other that are part of any specific group. Knobel has very specifically composed the groupings, made each panel very rigorously relate to the others in its group and if you have these small variations in size from one Anima Mundi group to another, then that of course negates the possibility of different panels being erroneously hung together, forming a group that was not intended to be a group.

Nicholas Robinson: 25:27

And what you have?

Nicholas Robinson: 25:27

You have these sort of, you know the repetition of the geometric constructions and of course, the more panels you have, the more permutations in you can see in the different colors that he deploys in all of the different compositional elements on any given panel and across all the panels.

Nicholas Robinson: 25:48

So the interesting thing about them, like with the 24 colors for Blinky, is that you stand in front of these and also, I should say, the solid colors that are painted on these elements of the Anima Mundi panels. They are also quite, they're quite loosely painted. I mean, when you stand back from them, they appear to be a very solid color, but when you scrutinize them more closely you can see a lot of nuance, handwork in the way the brushwork is on the surface. So you get this, this, this harmony, and you get this dissonance between the, the, the colors, and then you get this sort of strange sensation that's almost a vibration, and this is very much what he intends or intended for the viewer to perceive can you mention the garage representing a gnooble and maybe also some mages have high demand of his works than others.

Nicholas Robinson: 26:46

Yes, I think that I mean I don't. I would say that maybe a way to put it might be that he's still quite a European artist. I would say his main galleries certainly are in Europe, and we can get to why that is in a second. Perhaps he has three galleries. I mean, he has many galleries that have shown his work, that do continue to show his work, but I would say three core galleries that form the bedrock of his representation, and they would be in no particular order. They would be Thaddeus, ropac von Barter and White Cube.

Nicholas Robinson: 27:28

White Cube, predominantly in London, ropac, founded in Salzburg but also in London, but I suppose quite noted for their spaces in Paris.

Nicholas Robinson: 27:42

And then Vombarta is a very longstanding gallery with an impeccable pedigree, based out of Basel, also with an offshoot actually here in Copenhagen.

Nicholas Robinson: 27:55

And these three galleries have, you know, steadfastly represented Knovel's work for quite some time and I guess have been been the ones that you know invariably take his work to most of the fairs and and and have you know, hosted most of the important exhibitions in the last 20-30 years between them. And then I, and then I think that I think that, um, there's probably a lack of a major gallery in New York, and I think this is one of the things that is sort of interesting to us, because, you know, we, we, we buy the work because we, we think it's, you know, extraordinarily important and influential work of its type. But we also feel that it is under appreciated by the market at large. And I think if he had a major New York gallery pushing the work in the same way that these European galleries had done, then I would say that his status on the secondary market perhaps would be, and on the auction block would be, higher than it is now. You know what his auction record is.

Jeppe Curth: 29:13

Yeah, of course you do. Yeah, it's $461,000. Yeah, for a two and a half meter, 170.

Nicholas Robinson: 29:19

Yeah, and that painting is a 80s painting. I think A late 80s painting maybe.

Jeppe Curth: 29:26

It was the work. Well, the auction record was in 2016.

Nicholas Robinson: 29:29

Yeah, but the painting that.

Jeppe Curth: 29:30

It is from 1989.

Nicholas Robinson: 29:32

Yeah, okay, yeah, that's what I thought. Grace Kelly, yes, exactly, and Grace Kelly is. It looks like a sort of a precursor to Anima Mundi.

Jeppe Curth: 29:43

Yes, it is, yeah, indeed, yeah, look very much alike, yeah, um.

Nicholas Robinson: 29:47

So it has the same reductive elements and the same relationship, internal relationship, between the form and the color components of the work, um. But to go back to his auction record 461 000. Now, this is a lot of money by any standards, but when you look at his sort of peers, especially the artist that perhaps could be considered to have extremely parallel careers to him and are no more or no less important than Knirble, important than than um Knirbal, but Gunther Ferg um is an artist who has very similar parallels in terms of how the uh, in terms of what the consensus is regarding his importance, his achievements, et cetera. Certainly, his place in in in museums, uh, in institutions is is very similar, uh. But Ferg's auction record is $1.7 million and he shows with Hauser and Wirth, and so I imagine that there are many paintings, significant historic paintings, that they have sold that are probably significantly in excess of this $1.7 million.

Nicholas Robinson: 30:57

But Ferg is dead and, as is often the case when these sort of elder statesmen and women artists pass on um, there's a sort of a reappraisal of their contribution and a fresh understanding about what they've achieved and a spike of interest um, that tends to drive uh a better understanding of their value, which of course you know means many things inherent value, monetary value but the when the inherent value sort of appreciation goes up, then it then inevitably the market prices go goes up too, um, uh.

Nicholas Robinson: 31:35

So, anyway, ferg, his prices have gone up a lot posthumously, um, but Blinky Palermo, who died in 1977, and so there's been a long time between then and now, which has allowed a very powerful mythology legend to develop around him and his work and his auction record is more than $6 million. So you know there's no real reason why and Noble's prices are the way they are, but we feel like we can identify various sort of capricious reasons in the market as to why that's the case. But this obviously suggests that this won't endure forever and that buying his work probably is a good value proposition to do today.

Jeppe Curth: 32:26

As a result of this, yeah, makes sense to do today as a result of this. Yeah, makes sense. For this episode, I calculated the annual growth rate from Immigrant Nobles artworks by comparing price per square centimetres from early sales on auctions 32 years ago, which was the first sales, to recent ones.

Nicholas Robinson: 32:44

Okay, so all auction sales over 32 years.

Jeppe Curth: 32:46

Yes, so it's secondary market, not primary market, and so therefore, it will be publicly available.

Jeppe Curth: 32:52

Auction records yes, and using this I estimated a average annual increase on his prices or growth, you can say on 4.8 percent over time, showing that noble's value has like growing steadily in the art market. This is secondary yeah work prices or secondary market right. And also the auction result was in 2016,. So eight years ago. What does this tell us about his growth? But also that eight years ago he has his auction record and what does that tell us compared to primary prices?

Nicholas Robinson: 33:24

Well, okay, so this methodology of yours goes back to the first available auction record 32 years ago. Yes, and it shows 4.8% growth per year. Yes, so what is that total sort of growth over the time span?

Jeppe Curth: 33:41

That is 367%. Okay, so getting on to 400%.

Nicholas Robinson: 33:46

Well, of course, you know we have inflation, so the price and the values of things goes up inevitably over time. But we obviously can see, therefore, that his, his appreciation within the market has fantastic longevity and has been certainly nothing other than completely stable, showing, you know, solid, you know growth over that time. But his primary market prices, I mean his primary market prices, vary from, you know, sort of 50,000 euros or so for a small panel, these biomorphic works that I described, with the painterly surface. You can get one that's maybe sort of 40, 50 centimeters, um, for around that price, maybe 60,000 euros, Um, and then they go up to you know, 300,000 or thereabouts for the very large ones, two and a half odd meters tall, Um, the Anima Mundis are obviously varying in price depending on how many panels are in any given constellation, Um, so one panel maybe is uh, sort of you know 50,000, 45,000 euros.

Nicholas Robinson: 35:04

You know there's a small economy of scale for two, which is 75, 80, 000 euros, three, etc. Etc. Um, I've seen five panel anima mundis, which are actually the rarest type but of course the most sophisticated type because of the variation that you get. You know you get a lot of painting in across these five panels and you get a very highly elucidated experience of everything that Nourbel is trying to achieve and trying to communicate. So I've seen five panel works for as much as 250, 260,000 euros, but probably on the primary market, you know they're still going to be under 200,000.

Nicholas Robinson: 35:47

So you know, obviously, the primary market prices and the secondary market prices. There's not a massive discrepancy between them, but there are clear signs that people are trying to sort of future-proof the prices. You know they're aware that he's very old, they're aware that he doesn't make very many Annamundi works anymore. They're aware that maybe there's very many fewer five panel, four panel works than two and three whatever. So you know there's relative scarcity and that's going to drive demand and price in relation to that sort of highly inelastic supply. So, yeah, people understand supply. So, so, yeah, people understand of course as well that they're that Knoebel's work is about color and some of the color harmonies that you get within these paintings are more attractive and more melodic than others, than others.

Nicholas Robinson: 36:54

Um, sometimes, when he's looking to to try and explore dissonance between the colors so that you have what feels, um, rather inharmonious or perhaps a certain awkward juxtaposition between the tones, it doesn't feel as attractive or as obvious. Um, now this is. This is clearly part of his intentionality for the work, but you know, people often prize prettier things over more uncomfortable things. And you know, ones that are overtly pretty, with a a nice range of very harmonious colours, will probably perform better than one that has almost no colour or that has very dark or muddy colours.

Jeppe Curth: 37:42

So how important would you say that Imi Gnubel is when we're speaking art history? Did he find his place already?

Nicholas Robinson: 37:52

Of course, without question. I mean you, you look at the, you, you can trace this, this lineage of, of, of color theory, all the way through from the early part of the the 20th century. Of course you've got these titans mondrian, malevich, and then you've got the bauhaus um, which the importance of the bauhaus, in my view, can't be overstated just because of the, the way that it formed the wellspring for so many other kinds of things to come from it in the 20th century. And you know, you can trace knobel directly through this um, through the course that he taught.

Nicholas Robinson: 38:34

You know, I think when you look at conceptual painters and abstract painters coming out of Germany in the middle of the 20th century, you can't really look past. You know Gerhard Richter as the greatest of them all. But if you look at the generation, that is, you know the same age, essentially that kind of came out of that. Then you know the same age, essentially that kind of came out of that. Then you know, you look at Ferg and Palermo and Knobel as the three great artists. And I think that you can't really, you know you can't really create too much of a distinction between any of those three as one being of greater repute or achievement than another. So, you know, you have to say that Knoebel is an extremely seminal abstract painter of this period who's still, you know, working in a very high level today. So, yes, he's found his place and he's, you know, performed, you know, an immeasurable contribution to abstract painting in the 20th century.

Jeppe Curth: 39:37

For listeners who want to delve more into McNeville's works. Where should they start and what should they look for? Special periods, special works.

Nicholas Robinson: 39:49

Well, I think you know there's clear bodies of work that Knoebel has made.

Nicholas Robinson: 39:53

I mean, we mentioned that he works serially, so I think just understanding these main bodies of work is a good way to get an overview of what his objectives are.

Nicholas Robinson: 40:13

Objectives are, um, if you look at the, the the deer website, um, they have really interesting and fantastic holdings of historic works and a really really nice descriptions that sort of summarize what each one is is about. That's a really good way to get a fundamental understanding of of of Knoebel's work. Um, so I would recommend that as a good source of research. And then I think, if you look at the, the gallery websites I always enjoy ropex website, just because they have a really nice way of of of showing the chronological sequence of exhibitions so you can kind of click into each show in sequence, see how one body of work evolves out of a preceding one. And then you've you've got press releases that pertain to each each show and often video content where scholars and the artist indeed also engaged in conversation talking about the work. So that's a really nice way of kind of consuming information about his work in a somewhat sort of entertaining content format. And then von Barter and White Cube too, have got really good overviews on him and his practice.

Jeppe Curth: 41:26

Great, nick. Thanks once again for picking up brain. Do you think we missed anything? Anything to add?

Nicholas Robinson: 41:32

I don't. I mean listen, we could talk about his work all day. He's been working for more than 50 years, so it'd be easy to get more of a deep dive. But I think as an overview, as a way of summarizing, you know what he's about and what he's done and how he's perceived by the market.

Jeppe Curth: 41:51

I think, yeah, we've ticked. We've ticked most of the boxes today. Good, thank you. Well, that's it for us yeah, I guess it is, and then let's hope there will be a listener for the next episode. Yeah, okay, good, thank you bye. If you have any questions or any requests, you are more than welcome to write to us at info at nordicartpartnerscom, and we will do what we can to help you. Thanks for listening and we hope to have you back for our next episode. Goodbye.