Wols Photographs

"This exhibition of 1930s photographs by Wols will be the first presentation of this material in the United States. The German-French artist Wols, short for Wolfgang Schulze (1913-1951), rose to fame in the post-1945 European art scene as the founder of Informel painting. Previous European curators and scholars have thus presented Wols' photographs of the 1930s as anticipations of or studies for the later paintings. By contrast, this exhibition and the accompanying catalogue will, for the first time, present the photographs as an independent, coherent body of work that resonates rather with European photographic practices in the twenties and thirties. Wols' photographs combine Bauhaus material studies and surrealist defamiliarizations of objects. Their central fascinating characteristic is the peculiar entwinement of an inspecting but at the same time alienated gaze, of a curious and repulsed attitude towards the world. Approximately thirty photographs will be lent from The Getty Museum for the exhibition, which will be supplemented by loans from European institutions and the artist's family"--Publisher's website.