Following the outbreak of World War II, Wols, a German expatriate, was imprisoned in the South of France for over a year. Deprived of his camera—his preferred artistic tool—he began making drawings and watercolors, practices that he continued after his release and also expanded to include painting and printmaking. The hallucinatory, imagined worlds he depicted were frequently produced for literary collaborations with existentialist writers and poets, including Jean-Paul Sartre and René de Solier, whose prose seems a fitting match for Wols's anxious, compulsive line work.

Gallery label from

Soldier, Spectre, Shaman: The Figure and the Second World War, October 24, 2015-March 20, 2016.

Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 31 7/8 x 32" (81 x 81.1 cm)
Credit Gift of D. and J. de Menil Fund
Object number 29.1956
Department Painting & Sculpture

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