Wols, Karsten Greve Gallery, Paris
du 6 mai 2023 au 29 juillet 2023
WolsThe Karsten Greve Gallery is pleased to present for the first time in its Parisian space a retrospective devoted to Wols (1913, Berlin – 1951, Paris), 25 years after a first exhibition in the Cologne gallery. Celebrating one hundred and ten years since the artist's birth, this exhibition illustrates the importance of Wols' singular art through the largest collection of works on canvas and paper, photographs, printed works and letters ever assembled in France, coming from the collection of Karsten Greve, but also from important private collections.
“_WOLS, little man from the Moon who landed among us, conducts his stubborn monologue with the obstinacy of a conscientious loyalist. Its mysterious hieroglyphs which, in their finesse compete with the spider, teach us the poetry of the interplanetary astral and reconstitute under the subtle refractions of their iridescent light, the fauna, the flora and even the humanities of the dream of invisible microcosms,” wrote Jean Sylveire in 1943. The visionary work of Wols (from his birth name Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze) is in the image of his time and his life: marked by war, exile, symbolic of the ineffable pain faced with the bitterness of the post-war period.
Vidéo de présentation de l'exposition
Writer and art critic Shigeo Chiba on WOLS (Paris 2023)
Shigeo Chiba is the author of the catalog raisonné of Wols' work.
Art historian and curator Sarah Wilson on WOLS (Paris 2023)