Bowdoin College Homepage
Bowdoin College Museum of Art Logo and Wordmark

Advanced Search
Preview image of work. gouache on paper,  Untitled 13025

2003.11.88

Recommend keywords

Help us make our collections more accessible by providing keywords to describe this artwork. The BCMA uses the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus to provide consistent keywords. Enter a keyword in the field below and you will be prompted with a list of possible matching AAT preferred terms.

 
 

Untitled

Export record as: Plain text | JSON | CDWA-Lite | VRA Core 4

Artist

Wols (Alfred Otto-Wolfgang Schülze Wols) (1913 - 1951)

Title

Untitled

Creation Date

ca. 1946-1947

Century

mid-20th century

Dimensions

6 1/4 in. x 9 1/4 in. (15.88 cm x 23.5 cm)

Object Type

watercolor

Creation Place

Europe, Germany

Medium and Support

gouache on paper

Credit Line

Bequest of William H. Alexander, in memory of his mother and father, Mr. and Mrs. William Homer Alexander

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Accession Number

2003.11.88

Wols found his artistic beginnings among Surrealist artists in France and became a leading artist of French Art Informel and Tachisme. His works are often haunting, almost hallucinatory. In “Untitled,” Wols draws four black and red forms, overlaid on a pink background, that seem tormented. Whether the work relates to a personal illness or reflects more broadly the socioeconomic and cultural dislocations widely experienced in the immediate postwar years, it presents a sensitive, quiet, albeit skeptical new direction for abstract art that could be perceived as a seed of hope.