Wilhelm Imkamp (1906 - 1990)

Wilhelm Imkamp

Wilhelm Imkamp was a German painter and a student of the Bauhaus and is one of the most important abstract painters of the post-war period in Germany.

Even though Imkamp made over 500 portraits in his lifetime and thus secured his income for several years of his life, abstract painting is and remains the core of his work. His paintings were created without sketches and preliminary studies, he always painted several pictures at the same time and let a composition emerge in many individual steps from the interaction of colour and form alone. Impressions from nature and music were his sources of inspiration, which played a part in the creative process, but in the end a completely new world of images emerged, on the basis of which the picture titles were also found. Imkamp's work is clearly recognisable as a Bauhaus student, strongly influenced by Wassily Kandinsky's colour compositions, Paul Klee's narrative span and Lyonel Feiniger's structured use of space. Over the years, however, he developed a very independent artistic position among the students of the Bauhaus.