13 Facts About Alfred Wolmark

Alfred Aaron Wolmark was a painter and decorative artist.

Alfred Wolmark was a Post Impressionist and a pioneer of the New Movement in Art.

Alfred Wolmark was born Aaron Wolmark into a Jewish family in Warsaw, who were amongst the many subsequently fleeing the pogroms of Eastern Europe.

Alfred Wolmark studied briefly at the Royal Academy Schools and exhibited there from 1901 to 1936.

In July 1911, after an artistic epiphany on honeymoon in Concarneau, Brittany, he became influenced by modern French painting, his colour palette and style became post impressionist, and Alfred Wolmark jettisoned his early methods in favour of the pioneering 'colourist' path that he followed for the next two decades of his working life.

Alfred Wolmark was one of the British fauves and pitched his tonal divisions to a higher key than any of his contemporaries.

Alfred Wolmark kept to traditional genre, and transformed his subjects through the use of flattened forms, built up with a heavy impasto.

Alfred Wolmark's daring use of bright colour on some paintings such as "An Arrangement: Group of Nudes" demonstrate a skillset akin to Andy Warhol and earned him the title of 'The Colour King'.

Alfred Wolmark's work was finally placed next to Van Gogh's, a matter of considerable pride to the artist in later years.

In 1910, works by Alfred Wolmark were included in Roger Fry's seminal exhibition "Manet and the Post Impressionists" at the Grafton Gallery.

In later years Alfred Wolmark met the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and the two became close friends.

Chesterton, Alfred Wolmark was active as a graphic designer, producing book illustrations and posters, as well as undertaking work on costume and stage designs for two Diaghilev ballets in 1911, a set of abstract designs for the stained glass windows of St Mary's Parish Church, Slough in 1915 and a selection of decorative pottery for an exhibition the following year.

Alfred Wolmark's paintings are now in many galleries around the world, including the National Portrait Gallery, London, Sheffield, Derby Museum and Art Gallery, and Fischer Hall, London.