Art professor instrumental in the establishment of modernist art history in Germany after World War II. Imdahl studied both (studio) painting and art history, archaeology and Germanistik beginning in 1945 at the University of Münster. His painting skills were good enough to win him the Blevin-Davis Prize in 1950. A year later he wrote his dissertation on the treatment of color in late Carolingian book illustration ("Farbenprobleme spätkarolingischer Buchmalerei") under Werner Hager.