edgar knoop 2026

Edgar Knoop is artist and colour theorist. From 1972 to 2000, he taught experimental and applied colour theory at the Munich academy. Research into colour theory, the study of colour systems, the science of colour contrasts, the phenomenon light and light technology form the basis of his artistic work. Subsequently, since the 1960s, he has continuously been building up a stringent oeuvre which unites art, science and technology, using an experimental and interdisciplinary approach.

Colour and light determine the further development as constant aspects which manifest themselves alternately with form, space and movement in a broad spectrum of two- and three-dimensional works. The work is expressed along the lines of concrete art, op art and kinetics. The work aims at a specific effect and is based on exact planning, mathematical and technical calculation. Edgar Knoop constructs works fluctuating between artistic object and technical/scientific apparatus.

However, the present exhibition at the MMKK is not only a look back at these impressive milestones of systematics. It also confronts the audience with a surprising transformation in the artist’s late oeuvre. In addition to the precise systems of the past, the focus is also on completely fresh, recent works that document a radical shift in Knoop’s body of work: the explicit exploration of the topic of kitsch. A specific area of aesthetics that the artist has confronted with a palpable intellectual distance and dry scepticism for many decades, he now, at an advanced age, devotes himself to it in a phase of absolute artistic freedom.

As a whole, this exhibition therefore not only celebrates the acceptance of important works into the collections of the Province of Carinthia, but is also a genuine acknowledgement of a great artist with the rare talent to be able to reinvent himself in his late work.

Curator: Mag.^a Christine Wetzlinger-Grundnig