Wols

(German, 1913-1951)

Untitled (Eclipse rouge)
1946

Footnotes

This work is accompanied by a photo-certificate of authenticity from Dr. Ewald Rathke.

Provenance
Professor Jean Dausset Collection, Paris (gift from the artist in 1951)
Sale: Maître Binoche, Paris, Surréalisme, Art Moderne, Collection de Jean Dausset et à divers amateurs, 8 July 1999, Lot 6
Galerie 1900-2000, Paris
Galerie Michael Werner, Cologne
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2002

Literature
Laszlo Glozer, Wols Photograph, Munich 1978, p. 13, no. 7, illustrated in black and white
Philipp Gutbrod, Wols, Die Arbeiten auf Papier, vol. IV, Heidelberg 2004, n.p., no. A-803, illustrated in black and white


In 1951 the Nobel Prize winning doctor Professor Jean Dausset was given this magnificent work directly by Wols where it remained until 1999 alongside other masterpieces from the Surrealist movement in the doctor's celebrated collection. The collection was particularly known for its focus on key works by artists including Yves Tanguy, Victor Brauner, Roberto Matta, Simon Hantaï and Zao Wou-Ki amongst others making it one of the most compelling and complete collections of Surrealist Art assembled at the time.

The concentric structure of this work oscillates between meticulously detailed construction of the explosive ink-patterns and poetically clouded pastels. Adding to the elaborate technical skills displayed in this work, the grattage method developed by Max Ernst and Joan Miró, and refined by Wols, highlights the painstakingly precise trail of the artist's hand – a vivid trace of his physical presence. The dialogue between the densely knit, jet-black web and the free-floating, coloured layers increases the expressive singularity of the composition. A subtle, abstract finesse juxtaposed to intuitive immediacy makes this a prime example of Wols' explorations leading to him defining the dynamism of Tachisme.

His seismic impact on this Post-War movement and the historic reverberations on the Nouvelle Ecole de Paris and Lyrical Abstraction are only now being fully appreciated some six decades later. Major retrospectives in the Kunsthalle Bremen and The Menil Collection, Houston have initiated the global repositioning of Wols as one of the central figures of Post-War European Art.

Executed at the end of the artist's life, this work is supposedly the representation of a laceration to the skin which is reflected in the artist's use of a very bright red colour around the black centre and of a paler mélange of purple and dark pink pastel colours in the rest of the composition. This laceration looks also very much like an explosion, with the black circle in the middle of it and black lines which depart from the centre, pointing out of the work to give a sense of movement. The explosion is also the main subject of another seminal work on paper executed by Wols circa 1946 called L'Explosion de la Cathédrale sold by Bonhams in July 2014 for a world record price for a work on paper by the artist. Consciously aware of dimensional constraints Wols unfolds an irradiant power within this small-scale format that invites the viewer to follow the rhythm of the lines and discover the intimately animated, exquisite composition.