Title
Jean Sendy (Abelson) with monocle
circa 1930
Artist
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Details
- Date
- circa 1930
- Media category
- Photograph
- Materials used
- gelatin silver photograph
- Dimensions
- 23.8 x 17.4 cm (irreg.)
- Signature & date
Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Alistair McAlpine Photography Fund 2008
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 326.2008
- Copyright
- © Estate of Wols, Bildkunst/Copyright Agency
- Artist information
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Wols (Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze)
Works in the collection
- Share
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About
Born in Berlin and brought up in Dresden, photographer, painter, draughtsman and illustrator, Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze adopted the abbreviated pseudonym ‘Wols’ at the time of the 1937 Paris World’s Fair when he was commissioned as official photographer for the Pavillon de l’Elégance. Previously, Wols held an internship with Dresden photographer, Genga Jonas (1931), studied ethnology at the Afrika-Institute in Frankfurt (1932) before a brief experience at Mies van der Rohe’s Bauhaus Institute in Berlin where he was encouraged by László Moholy-Nagy to go to Paris. There, he began working as a photographer.
Despite travels to Spain, the Balearic Islands and the numerous attempts to immigrate to America, it was in Paris that Wols settled and made the acquaintance of people such as Fernand Léger, J P Sartre, Max Ernst and Jacques Prévert and became a major figure in Taschisme: ‘l’art informel’.
Wols’ photographs vary from close-up portraits – from which he made an occasional living – to still lives of skinned animals often juxtaposed with ordinary objects. These latter have some relationship to Frederick Sommer though it is unlikely the two knew each other.
His work has been and continues to be exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Europe and elsewhere. His work is held in major German and French collections as well as at The J Paul Getty Museum. Two of his post War illustrated books are held at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
As a German national, his photographic career was cut short on the outbreak of WWII by the confiscation and destruction of his photo equipment and his fourteen month internment as an enemy alien in several French prisons. After the War he worked mainly as a painter until his death in 1951.
Wols' subject here is the French author Jean Sendy (1910-78), born Dimitri Abelson.
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Exhibition history
Shown in 5 exhibitions
Wols: vintage photographs from the 1930s, UBU Gallery, New York, 22 Feb 2001–21 Apr 2001
Portraits of an age, Neue Galerie, New York, , 11 Mar 2005–06 Jun 2005
Portraits of an age, Albertina, Vienna, 06 Jul 2005–16 Oct 2005
La trajectoire du regard: une collection de photographies du XXe siècle, Salle du quai Antoine 1er, , 24 Feb 2006–22 Mar 2006
What's in a face? aspects of portrait photography, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 24 Sep 2011–05 Feb 2012
Shadow Catchers, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 22 Feb 2020–03 Jan 2021
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Bibliography
Referenced in 4 publications
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Monika Faber and Janos Frecot (Editors), Portraits of an age: photography in Germany and Austria, 1900-1938, 2005, 71 (illus.).
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Phillips de Pury & Company, Collection of Corbeau et Renard assembled by Gerd Sander, Part I, 09 Apr 2008, (illus.). lot 152
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Hermann Pollig, Viola Suhle-Moosmann and Erna Haist, Wols: photographien, aquarelle, druckgraphik, 1988, (illus.).
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Corbeau & Renard, La trajectoire du regard: une collection de photographies du XXe siècle., 2006, 315 (illus.).
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