Wols was born in Berlin, Germany in 1913, the son of a wealthy Protestant family. His real name is Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze. Considered one of the central figures of the "Informalism" movement, one of the major art movements of the 20th century, and a pioneer of Abstract Expressionism, Wols himself never belonged to any particular school or group during his life.

He studied folklore and anthropology, and was mentored by Paul Klee at the Bauhaus, an avant-garde art education institution, but all were short-lived. He left Nazi-controlled Germany and moved to Paris, where he became friends with Max Ernst, Joan Miró, and other painters of his time. In France, Wols first tried to make a living as a photographer, and was appointed official photographer at the 1937 Paris Exposition Universelle. That same year, he held a solo exhibition of his photographs at the Galerie Les Pléiades in Paris.

In 1939, at the outbreak of World War II, Wols was captured as an enemy alien in France and sent to a prison camp. It was around this time that he began working in earnest on watercolor paintings, and in 1945 he held a solo exhibition at the René Drouin Gallery in Paris. Finally, he is gaining recognition as an artist. The philosopher Sartre, one of France’s leading cultural figures of the 20th century, highly praised Wols’s work and commissioned him to illustrate his works, and in 1947 he held his second solo exhibition at the Drouin Gallery. Wols’s fame as a painter gradually grew, but his health gradually deteriorated due to alcoholism. In 1951, he died of food poisoning at the age of 38.