Wols

Wols (the pseudonym of Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze, b. Germany 1913, d. France 1951) occupies a mythic position in post-war European painting as an emblematic figure of the Informel movement, which, like its American counterpart, “Abstract Expressionism,” was a bridge between Surrealist-inspired automatism and gestural abstraction. When Wols arrived in Paris in 1932, he was already practicing photography. It is the influence of the two prevailing, yet seemingly antithetical, photographic currents of the times—Surrealism in France and Neue Sachlichkeit (“New Objectivity”) in Germany—that imbues his photographic oeuvre with its unique and distinctive vision. The result is a troubling encapsulation of the familiar and banal, an off-kilter representation of reality. Vintage photographs by Wols are extremely rare and the exhibition at Ubu Gallery contained approximately 30 images covering the four principal areas of Wols’s photographic output—still life, portraiture, fashion and abstraction.

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Wols 
Vintage Photographs from the 1930s