Powerful, bright shades of colour pervaded by freely composed lines characterize the new colour woodcuts and recent oil crayon works on wood by the German artist Paco Knöller. Since the 1980s he has been considered one of the most important contemporary artists working in the traditional woodcut medium. Based on drawn notations of his perception of reality, which often contain allusions to figurative, botanical or technical subjects, Knöller finds himself in a position of uncertainty with regards to the colouring part of the printing process. The works are ”characterized by the ambivalence toward both spontaneity and precise planning, a game played with strictly organized happenstance.“ (Ulrich Krempel).
 

Paco Knöller was born in 1950 in the small Swabian town Obermarchtal in southern Germany. He started studying art in 1972 in the class of Joseph Beuys in Düsseldorf and finished at the Academy in 1978. From 2001 to 2013 he has taught at the Academy of Art in Bremen. In 1978 he had his first solo show in the Städtische Galerie in Ravensburg. Since then his works have been shown continuously at well-known German museums including the Nationalgalerie Berlin (1988), the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Düsseldorf (1990), the Sprengel Museum Hannover (1997), the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe (1997) and the Museum Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin (2002). In 2001 he was awarded the ”Oberschwäbische Kunstpreis“. Paco Knöller lives and works in Berlin.