WOLS is one of the most prominent artists of the twentieth century, yet scarcely anyone knows his name. Art history views him as the pioneer of Art Informel painting, and yet the complexity of his artistic existence defies any categorization.In 1932, just 19 years old, he leaves Germany to have his finger on the pulse of time in Paris. Throughout his life he struggled for an existence beyond the middle-class, and in doing so not lastly slid into the vicissitudes of the National Socialist war against European culture.Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze began calling himself WOLS in 1937. In close contact with the great artists and poets in 1930s Paris, he launched his artistic career as a self-taught artist with the medium of photography. During his photographic excursions he captures a different image of Paris by focusing on the small miracles, the remote, and the alien beyond the dazzling façades.When at the outset of World War II he, as a German in France, has to spend time in various detention camps, he begins to draw. His watercolours delineate a bizarre, fantastic world of images of human existence. He develops the idea for an alternative artistic draft of the world - CIRCUS WOLS.German text.