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Wols was the pseudonym of Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze (27 May 19131 September 1951), a German painter and photographer predominantly active in France. Though broadly unrecognized in his lifetime, he is considered a pioneer of lyrical abstraction, one of the most influential artists of the Tachisme movement.Chilvers, Ian & Glaves-Smith, John eds., Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. pp. 759–760 He is the author of a book on art theory entitled Aphorismes de Wols.
After abandoning school, Schulze pursued several interests, including ethnography before moving to Paris in 1932 on the advice of László Moholy-Nagy. After visiting Germany in 1933, he decided not to return, instead traveling to Barcelona, Mallorca, and Ibiza, where he worked odd jobs, including a stint as a taxicab driver and a German tutor.While he was in Barcelona, he did not listen to the call-up for the labor services in Germany and was arrested in Spain, and he did not have a passport, so he spent a few months in prison in Barcelona.
In 1936, he received official permission to live in Paris with the help of Fernand Léger; as an desertion, Schulze had to report to the Paris police on a monthly basis. Beginning in 1937, he actively worked on his photographs, which were shown in many of Paris's most prestigious galleries. He befriended luminaries of the period, including Max Ernst and Jacques Prévert. As a German national, Schulze (like Ernst) was internment camp at the start of World War II, he was then incarcerated originally in the State de Colombes in Paris, and after that, he was moved from camp to camp, moving south until he reached his final camp at Camp des Miles where he passed the time drawing and painting in watercolor, but he managed to escape and hide in Cassis near Marseille In 1942 he fled from the Germans to the safety of Montélimar.
He spent most of the war trying to emigrate to the United States, an unsuccessful and costly enterprise that may have driven him to alcoholism. Upon his return to Paris, after the hype from the war had died down, he had his first exhibition of watercolors in December 1945 at the Galerie René Drouin, where despite the lack of commercial success he made an impression on the circle of intellectuals around the gallery. These included Jean Paulhan, Francis Ponge, Georges Limbour and André Malraux. The small works were displayed in light boxes.Francis Morris, Paris Post War – Art and Existentialism 1945–55, A second exhibition in the same gallery two years later saw greater recognition. His paintings represented a rejection of figuration and abstraction, and a projection into a metaphysical plane.
In the years following the war, Schulze concentrated on painting and etching. His health declined severely towards the end of the 1940s; in 1951 he died of food poisoning at the Hotel Montalembert in Paris, after releasing himself from hospital against medical advice.Auction catalogue, Drouot Richelieu, Paris, 15 June 2011 After his death his works were shown at the Kassel documenta (1955), documenta II (1959) and documenta III (1964).
Wols was noted for his etchings and for his use of stains ( taches) of color dabbed onto the canvas (as exemplified by his painting Composition, c. 1950). His painted work contains figurative elements as well as free improvisations and abstract elements. Spontaneity and immediateness determine the creative work of Wols, who never underwent any formal artistic training. Randomness (initially inspired by the Surrealist psychic Automatism) plays an important role in his unstructured compositions. In later years Wols was particularly interested in the combination of powerful brushstrokes with a relief-like painted surface structure.
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