Pierre Knop

Pierre Knop’s paintings convey a childlike fantasia by means of a loose and playful creative process. He freely alternates between finely drawn lines and thick, heavy brush strokes to depict idyllic mountainous landscapes and calm seascapes.  

For his imaginary landscapes, Knop uses his own photographs taken during his travels as a starting point. The artist playfully approaches his canvases as both a sketchbook and a painting: using a multitude of mediums such as crayon, oil sticks, oil pastel, acrylic, and ink. In his enchanted scenes, the landscape is always a gigantic vision that powerfully upstages the small human figures. By deliberately flattening the perspective and blending rich, swirling colours with expressionist and post-impressionist influences, he opens up his paintings to various moods and interpretations. His paintings are rife with references to art history, and within them he addresses a wide range of topics, from the sociopolitical to the humorous and quotidian.  

Pierre Knop lives and works in Cologne, Germany. Knop graduated from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under the tutelage of Andreas Schulze and Katharina Grosse in 2013, and became a visiting professor of painting 2019/20 at The State Academy of Arts Karlsruhe, Germany. He has held solo exhibitions at CHOI&CHOI, Seoul; Yossi Milo Gallery, New York; and Gether Contemporary, Copenhagen. He has participated in group exhibitions at Ruttkowski;68 Gallery, Cologne; Anat Ebgi Gallery, Los Angeles; and Meyer Riegger, Berlin; among others.