Otto Wols

"OTTO WOLS"; ALFRED OTTO WOLFGANG SCHULZE (Berlin, 1913 - Paris, 1951).
Untitled.
Etching, copy 41/125.
Signed in plate. Hand numbered.
With label of the Manuel Barbié Gallery on the back.
Measurements: 23,5 x 19 cm.

German painter and photographer, the work of Otto Wols includes varied movements: from the psychic automatism to the surrealism or the tachist movement. Initiated in the photographic field in Dresden, in 1932 he enrolled at the Bauhaus in Berlin, making friends with personalities such as Gropius, Mies Van de Rohe or Mohli-Nagy, the latter through whom he met Léger and Ozenfant. In 1953 he moved to Paris, where he met Miró, Ernst, Tanguy, Brauner, Tzara or Calder and thus began his works of small formats executed with India ink and watercolor. After spending three months in prison for refusing to do his military service, Wols began to produce a total work in which he brought together art, science and philosophy. As a result of being held in a concentration camp, the German artist fell into a brutal depression that led him to produce an automatic and existential work. Within the art world, Otto Wols is considered an important figure because he created Tachism, the European equivalent of Jackson Pollock's American Action Painting. In 1946 he paints "forty moments of the crucifixion of man".