Wols (Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze)

About

Wols, born Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze in Berlin on May 27, 1913, was a German painter, photographer, engraver, and draftsman who became a key figure in postwar European art. He moved to Paris in 1932 at age 19 to escape his bourgeois family and the rising Nazi regime, adopting the pseudonym 'Wols' from a 1937 telegram abbreviation. Initially self-taught, he began as a photographer creating experimental Surrealist-influenced cityscapes, portraits, and still lifes, while associating with artists like Max Ernst and Joan Miró. Interned as a stateless person during World War II, he turned to drawing and watercolor, producing figurative works influenced by Surrealism before shifting toward abstraction.

Lyrical abstraction, Tachisme, Art Informel, with Surrealist influences evolving to gestural, abstract impasto techniques