The painter and graphic artist Gustav Wolf taught at the Baden Art School in Karlsruhe for one year starting in 1920. He then worked as a freelancer and in addition to commercial graphics, created art works, including self-contained graphic series that did not portray the visible world but were rather visionary creations. Wolf spent most of the last years before his emigration from Germany outside of his home country. At times he lived as a lodger at the house of Hilde Domin in Rome. He also travelled to Sicily, through Greece and several times to Switzerland. From 1933, however, the Jewish artist felt that he was "surrounded by invisible glass prison walls" in Germany (Brähler, Gustav Wolf, 2000). By 1936, he had already auctioned off all his furniture, including his printing press, between two trips abroad. He boarded a ship to New York in February 1938.

He spent his exile years there under difficult working and living conditions. Wolf offered his services as a commercial artist and also worked on a chicken farm. At the same time, he created hundreds of graphic works that testify to how Wolf, who had suffered depressive phases from childhood, worked himself to exhaustion as a homeless exile in the American metropolis.  In 1942 he and his wife left New York and moved to the refugee hostel in Cummington, where their friend Jacob Picard had had good experiences. Thanks to a local publisher of book art, Wolf was able there to work once again in a professional environment as a graphic designer.

Finally, Wolf took on a job as an art teacher at a girls' school at Northfield in Massachusetts. After the war he had the opportunity to return to Germany, receiving an offer to become a professor at the Karlsruhe Art Academy. But after he was diagnosed with diabetes his re-migration became impossible. Weakened by the disease, Gustav Wolf died on 18 December, 1947.

Further reading:
Borries, Johann Eckart von (Bearb.): Gustav Wolf. Das druckgraphische Werk. Karlsruhe: Staatliche Kunsthalle 1982
Brähler, Barbara / Braunecker, Wolfgang (Bearb.): Gustav Wolf. Schöpfer visionärer Kunst. Östringen: Gustav-Wolf-Kunstgalerie [1995]
Brähler, Barbara: Gustav Wolf (1887-1947). Eine Weltanschauung in Bildern. Werkverzeichnis des künstlerischen Nachlasses in Östringen. Diss. Heidelberg 2000