Wols (Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze)

Although predominantly unknown for the majority of his lifetime, the work of German painter and photographer Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze, better known as simply Wols, has since been recognized for its influence on the Tachisme and Lyrical Abstraction movements. He was also an accomplished art theorist, and published a book entitled Aphorismes de Wols. His loose, experimental style was marked by gestural paint dripping, and scratching the surfaces of his works. The concept of Randomness, as embraced by the psyche-obsessed Surrealists, was particularly important to his work. He was also keenly interested in the philosophy of Existentialism after meaningful interactions with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Wols’ work was exhibited posthumously at Kassel Documenta (1955), 1959) and (1964), as well as in the collections of many major museums around the world.