Wilhelm Imkamp (painter)

“Self-Portrait of the Artist”, 1930

Wilhelm Imkamp (born March 9, 1906 in Münster ; † November 1, 1990 in Stuttgart ) was a German painter and a student at the Bauhaus and was one of the most important abstract painters of the post-war period in Germany .

Life

youth

Wilhelm Imkamp was the youngest of four children of an independent master painter, glazier and house painter. He first attended elementary school and graduated from secondary school in Münster in 1926. He painted since he was little and his classmates basically just called him “painter”. From the age of 14 he attended the so-called "plaster class" at the Münster School of Applied Arts, where drawings were made from plaster models. From the age of 16 he also attended the "nude class". From an early age he supported his parents financially with smaller portrait jobs. On the advice of his drawing teacher, he applied to the State Bauhaus Dessau in 1926 .

Training at the State Bauhaus Dessau

W. Imkamp “Untitled”, 1929

Imkamp began studying in the winter semester of 1926/27. He attended Josef Albers' preliminary course and took part in the work in the workshops for wall painting and the Bauhaus print shop , and he also attended Kandinsky's color and form theory. From 1927 Imkamp studied in the free painting classes with Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. Imkamp visited Lyonel Feininger , who had no official teaching position, repeatedly in his master house.

He continued to finance his studies with portrait painting, and received a one-off sponsorship award from the state of Westphalia for training at the Bauhaus. In 1928/29 Imkamp took part in the traveling exhibition “Young Bauhaus Painters”, which was shown in Halle an der Saale, Braunschweig, Erfurt and Krefeld. In addition, his pictures were exhibited in the “ Jury-Free Art Show” in the state exhibition building at Lehrter Bahnhof in 1929 .

In 1929 Imkamp took a leave of absence from the Bauhaus and went to Paris for an academic year. During this time he was in contact with Kandinsky, who certified that he had found his own language. The so-called “Paris Mappe” was created, which with its 29 sheets forms the core of his artistic work. After completing his studies, Imkamp settled in Essen as a freelance artist.

National Socialism

W. Imkamp: "Clowning", 1956

In 1932, the Folkwang Museum in Essen showed a solo exhibition with non-representational paintings by Imkamp, ​​which went to the Municipal Museum in Duisburg in 1932/33. Another takeover by other museums was prevented by the National Socialists. In order to avoid the impending painting ban, Imkamp officially only appeared as a portrait painter until 1945, which actually earned his money, and pursued his passion, abstract painting, only in secret. In 1939 he married Charlotte Rube and moved to Giessen . In the same year Imkamp was called up and served as a soldier and from 1944 as a non-commissioned officer in the Air Force Construction Company. In order to consolidate his position as a portrait painter, Imkamp took part in the Great German Art Exhibition in Munich in 1939, 1940, 1941 and 1943 . In 1939 Hitler bought the portrait of the pianist Elly Ney , which meant that Imkamp was hired as a "war painter" and transferred to the Western Front, which saved him from the heavy physical work of the construction company. In 1942 he was able to meet Kandinsky in his studio in Paris. In 1944 the apartment and studio in Gießen were completely destroyed in a bomb attack, which is why Imkamp moved to Allendorf (Lumda) in 1945 . In 1946 Imkamp was classified as "unencumbered" in the course of denazification.

Post-war abstraction

After the war, Imkamp devoted himself exclusively to abstraction. Through the neurologist Walter Winkler he met the art historian Richard Hamann , who helped him to have his first solo exhibition in the Marburg University Museum in 1946. Initially known in the Rhine-Ruhr and Westphalia area, Imkamp expanded his contacts to southern Germany by joining the “Neue Gruppe” artists' association and participating in the annual exhibitions at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. Inspired by the art historian Julius Baum , Imkamp moved to Asperg near Stuttgart in 1948 to approach the new center for abstract art. It was here that the important friendships with the painter Ida Kerkovius and the art collector Erich Schurr developed, in whose gallery “Maercklin” Imkamp had three solo exhibitions. In 1951 Imkamp joined the artists' association “Gruppe sw” and in 1953 moved to Stuttgart. There he was a volunteer member of the jury and hanging committee of the art association until 1959. Imkamp turned down several courses in order to concentrate on his painting. In the 1950s and 1960s, in addition to countless participations in exhibitions, many of the around 40 individual exhibitions to date took place in Germany and abroad. Today there are over 70 pictures in more than 30 museums, although most of the pictures are privately owned. Imkamp always sought direct contact with the collectors and until the 1960s decided not to work with the art trade, but to sell his pictures himself. In the 1970s and 1980s in particular, his mastery was known to art lovers, but Imkamp was less popular than his colleagues who used the official art market. He shied away from the "art hype" and withdrew more and more to his studio as he got older. In 1979, at the age of 73, he was awarded the title of honorary professor by the Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg. Imkamp died in 1990 in his studio in Stuttgart.

plant

W. Imkamp, ​​“Untitled”, 1974

Even if Imkamp made over 500 portraits in his life and thus secured his income for a few years of his life, abstract painting is and will remain the heart of his work. Imkamp's aim with her was to please the viewer and to give him a feast for the eyes. His pictures were created without sketches or preliminary studies, he always painted several pictures at the same time and in many individual steps created a composition solely from the interaction of color and shape. Impressions from nature and music were his sources of inspiration, which contributed to the design process, but ultimately a completely new world of images emerged, which was also used to find the title of the image. Imkamp's work is clearly recognizable as a Bauhaus student, heavily influenced by Kandinsky's color compositions, Klee's narrative range and Feiniger's structured spatial management. Over the years, however, he has developed an artistically very independent position among the Bauhaus students.

Imkamp's abstract post-war work can be roughly divided into five groups of works: Imkamp followed up with a few compositions immediately after the war from the “Paris Mappe” from the late 1920s, before dealing with Feininger's work in the mid to late 1940s sought. The result was pictures whose constructive shapes have an architectural character and are usually somewhat reserved in color. In the 1950s and 1960s the luminosity of the pictures increased, cheerfulness spreads, the radiant shapes stand out from the mostly monochrome background. In the 1970s, in addition to extremely dynamic, almost baroque-looking compositions, a number of moving ink drawings were created, in which one can find more erotic-looking forms than in the other pictures. In the last decade of Imkamp's life, many small formats with humorous narration were created in which fantasy beings play their jokes, the graphic element increases in importance in the older work.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions (selection)

• 1932: Museum Folkwang , Essen
• 1932/33: Municipal Museum, Duisburg
• 1946: University Museum, Marburg
• 1947: Galerie Griesebach, Heidelberg
• 1950: Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld; Municipal Museum, Wuppertal; Märkisches Museum, Witten
• 1951: Municipal Museum, Mülheim / Ruhr; Bochum Artists Association
• 1952: Suermondt Museum , Aachen; City Museum Duisburg; Municipal Museum, Gelsenkirchen; Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum, Hagen; Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne; Schanze, Münster iW
• 1953: Kunsthalle, Bremen; Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund; State Museum, Hanover; Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart
• 1954: Municipal Museum, Oldenburg; Schaetzler Palace, Augsburg
• 1955: Municipal Collection, Kaiserslautern
• 1958: Municipal art collection, Düsseldorf
• 1961: Municipal Collection, Soest; Bayer Kulturhaus, Leverkusen
• 1962: Kunstverein, Tübingen; Art pavilion, Soest
• 1963: Galerie Maercklin, Stuttgart
• 1964: University Museum, Marburg
• 1966: Kulturring, Marburg
• 1967: Art Circle, Gütersloh; Municipal Museum, Bottrop
• 1968: Maercklin Gallery, Stuttgart
• 1969: Märkisches Museum, Witten; Gallery Kröner, Freiburg
• 1976: Maercklin Gallery, Stuttgart
• 1979: Galerie Alvensleben, Munich
• 1980: Gallery for spatial art, Stuttgart
• 1981: Galerie Dorn, Stuttgart
• 1984: Rathausgalerie, Gerlingen
• 1986: Galerie Fischinger, Stuttgart
• 1989: Galerie Schlichtenmaier, Grafenau
• 1996: Galerie Schlichtenmaier, Grafenau
• 2005: Adolph Kolping Vocational College, Münster
• 2006: Gallery Schlichtenmaier, Grafenau
• 2006: Bonndorf Castle, Bonndorf
• 2006: Museum of the City of Waiblingen, Waiblingen
• 2016: Sparkassen-EnnepeFinanzCenter, Gevelsberg

Participation in exhibitions (selection)

• 1929: Young Bauhaus painters. Jury-free art show, Berlin
• 1946: General German Art Exhibition, Dresden; International art exhibition Konstanz
• 1947: Extreme Painting, Stuttgart; Non-objective painting, Bern
• 1949: Second German Art Exhibition, Dresden; Contemporary German Painting and Sculpture, Cologne; Art creation in Germany, Central Art-Collection Point, Munich; German abstract art, Zurich
• 1950: The Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Paintings, Carnegie Institute
• 1951: Brooklyn Museum, New York
• 1952: Non-objective painting in Germany, Mannheim; 114th spring exhibition, Kunstverein Hannover; gruppse sw, 1st exhibition, Stuttgart; State Art Gallery West German Artists Association, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf
• 1954: Art from private ownership in Esslingen, Esslingen Town Hall; Art of Our Time, Sig. Karl Ströher, Darmstadt State Museum, Darmstadt State Museum; 116th spring exhibition, Kunstverein Hannover
• 1955: The 1955 Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting, Carnegie Institute; Special exhibition New Darmstadt Secession; German Art Council, traveling exhibition Turkey
• 1956: 750 years of Dresden, Dresden and Stuttgart artists in the Albertinum, Dresden; Joint exhibition of artists from Dresden and Stuttgart, Frankfurt
• 1957: Art exhibition of Dresden and Stuttgart artists, Stuttgart; bauhaus exhibition, Sao Paulo
• 1958: Ars Viva German painting since 1950, Kunstverein Oldenburg
• 1968: 50 years of Bauhaus, Stuttgart
• 1979: Wilhelm Imkamp special exhibition at the Allensbach art exhibition, Allensbach
• 1983: Bauhaus artist, gallery at Weingarten art publisher
• 1983/84: Association of Visual Artists Württemberg, traveling exhibition
• 1988/89: stations of modernity. The major art exhibitions of the 20th century in Germany, Berlin
• 2013/14: Bauhaus. The art of the student. Gallery of the City of Remscheid and Bauhaus Dessau

• 1949–1959 regular participation in: Die Schanze, Münster
• 1953–1987 regular participation in the great art exhibition in the Haus der Kunst, Munich

literature

• Ute Schönfeld-Dörrfuß: Wilhelm Imkamp. Dissertation University of Stuttgart 1993
• Werner Sumowski, Helmut Herbst, Ute Schönfeld-Dörrfuß: Wilhelm Imkamp. Matthaes, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-87516-538-1

Web links

• Homepage private archive Wilhelm Imkamp
• Literature about Wilhelm Imkamp in the catalog of the national library
• Literature about Wilhelm Imkamp in the state bibliography of Baden-Württemberg
• Gallery Schlichtenmaier
• Walk-in Feuerbach memory

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ute Schoenfeld-Dörrfuß: Wilhelm Imkamp. Parisian portfolio . Waiblingen 2006.