Gil J Wolman papers

Joseph Wolman (1929-1995), best known by the name Gil J Wolman, was a French artist whose work spanned the visual arts, poetry, sound poetry, and filmmaking. Closely associated with the Lettrist movement, Wolman was among the founding members of the Internationale lettriste.

Born in 1929 in Paris, Wolman spent part of his youth working in wool clothing manufacture, and as a journalist. In 1950, along with Maurice Lemaître, Jean Louis Brau, Serge Berna, and Guy Debord, Wolman joined the young Lettrist movement led by Isidore Isou since 1945. Other figures of significance to the Lettrist movement’s evolution from the 1940s to the 1960s include Gabriel Pomerand, François Dufrêne, Jacques Spacagna, and Roberto Altmann.

The years following Wolman’s integration to the movement witnessed a period of collaboration among the Lettrists, the production of experimental films, and the publication of several magazines. In 1952, internal disagreements led to the creation of the break-off group Internationale lettriste by Debord, Wolman, Berna, and Brau. This new, radical Lettrism in turn influenced other European avant-garde groups interested in the intersections of art, politics, and society, such as the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (founded by Asger Jorn, Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio, and Piero Simondo in 1955 in Italy), the Internationale situationniste (a collective led by Debord created in 1957), and Gruppe Spur (a German collective active from 1957-1965). Excluded from the Internationale lettriste in 1957, Wolman founded the Deuxième internationale lettriste in 1963 with Brau and Dufrêne.

Wolman’s contributions to Lettrism are numerous, and include the invention of mégapneumes in the early 1950s (sound poems articulated solely with breath), and the production of content for several publications (Internationale lettriste, Deuxième internationale lettriste, Potlatch, Ion, etc). Wolman was also involved in Lettrist experimental cinema, not only through his own film L’Anticoncept (1951), but also appearing on the soundtrack of Isou’s Traité de bave et d’éternité (1950-51) and Debord’s Hurlements en faveur de Sade (1951). Finally, Wolman theorized the technique of “détournement” with Debord in 1956, a technique that would become central to both Debord’s Situationist writings, and Wolman’s future artistic practices.

From the 1960s onwards, Wolman actively participated in the Paris art gallery scene. In 1963, he invented “art scotch”, politically subversive collages of newspaper content extracted from their original pages with translucent adhesive tape. In the 1970s and 1980s, Wolman experimented with photocopy art and the making of artists’ books, and developed the “mouvement séparatiste” (the disruptive insertion of blank spaces in his artworks and texts). In addition to exhibiting in numerous solo and collective shows, Wolman served as editor of the exhibition directory L’Officiel des galeries. Starting circa 1979, Wolman self-published small runs of poetry and art books through his “Éditions inconnues” (Unknown editions).

Wolman met his life partner, artist and writer Charlotte Wolman (née Mandel), at a Lettrist recital in 1958. He passed away on July 3, 1995.