In the most recent catalogue of artworks relating to Karl Heinz Adler, Eugen Gomringer writes that his creative activity is represented by “the linearity of the medium”. Here, Gomringer is primarily referring to the Serielle Lineaturen, which constitutes the most extensive and fundamental artwork group in the artist’s oeuvre and which occupied Adler for almost two decades. Serielle Lineatur über Kreis is one of the first examples of this artwork group, which, in 1967-68, emerged from the fan-like spread forms of layerings. The Lineaturen were created in series, within which Adler was able to vary and shift concepts established a priori. In the collage in the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection, created using various types of paper on drawing cardboard, a circle breaks through the severe grid of grey strips and black squares. Fine graphite lines are marked out on the grey strips with great precision, with the interstices in the area of the circle producing white, plastic strips. The piece shows Adler’s desire for purity, clarity, and economy of artistic technique: the lines and strips visualise his preference for rhythm and repeating forms. Adler’s Serielle Lineaturen appear unique and visionary particularly with regard to their context in the GDR, where any form of non-representational art was rejected. For this reason also, Adler also looked for the regularity and beauty of concrete and constructive art on freestanding walls in the city space; in the 1960s, he engaged with the association of fine artists “Kunst am Bau” (“art for buildings”) in Dresden.