Paco Knöller
: Drawings and Oil Crayons on Wood

On the occasion of his 70th birthday, the Museum Ulm is presenting a cabinet exhibition of new graphic works by the artist Paco Knöller, who was born in Obermarchtal and today is one of the most important German contemporary artists of his generation. Already during his studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Joseph Beuys, Paco Knöller recognised the potential of drawing as a “Rrimal instrument for inquiring into the world and at the same time for visualising one’s own world“.

In his work, Paco Knöller investigates the symbiotic exchange between painting and drawing, penetrating the seemingly opposing forces of linearity and pictorial space. His pictorial language develops in a field of tension between virulent gestures, rhythmic gestures, punctual settings, filigree lines and extensive color spaces. Seismographically, the style of his handwriting follows intuitive movements. In doing so, Paco Knöller creates a fragile balance between delicate, tentative, gradually developing lines and strong color fields, resulting in energetically charged images that unite and disperse the two different painterly methods.

Paco Knöller was born in 1950 in Obermarchtal nearby Ulm. He began his studies in 1972 with Joseph Beuys and studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf until 1978. Also in 1978 the Städtische Galerie Ravensburg organized his first solo exhibition. Since then, his works have been regularly shown in leading German museums, such as the Nationalgalerie Berlin, the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, the Sprengel Museum Hannover, the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe and the Museum Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin.

From 2001 to 2013 he held a professorship at the Universität der Künste in Bremen.

Paco Knöller lives and works in Berlin.

With kind support