All manner of variants of a gesturally abstract form of composition emerged in the post-war period both in Europe and the United States: Tachisme, Art Brut, abstract expressionism and action painting, with automatism techniques providing a means of tapping into an ‘unconscious’ creative vein. Prior to the Second World War, surrealism had already paved the way for this new genre.

German Art Informel is essentially taken as referring to the period between the late 1940s and the early 1960s. This art movement reflected not least the existential situation in which humankind found itself after the Second World War. When it came to creating paintings after this ‘zero hour’, conventional means such as easels, brushes, oil paints and paint palettes were no longer a prerequisite. The paint was now mixed directly on the support medium, which was itself often laid out on the floor. The artists worked with their hands, with brushes and brooms, or palette knives and scrapers, using their sheer physical strength. Often the paint itself was admixed and enriched with other materials such as sand and putty not primarily intended for artistic purposes, and it was no longer geared aimed at reproducing the visible; rather, it became an object of creative design in its own right.

Among the first German artists to work on the concept of gestural-abstract painting were Hans Hartung (1904–1989), Fritz Winter (1905–1976) and Wols (1913–1951), who died young. The reception of Art Informel therefore focuses mainly on these three artists as well as Peter Brüning (1929–1970), Karl Fred Dahmen (1917–1981) Karl Otto Götz (1914–2017), Gerhard Hoehme (1920–1989), Bernard Schultze (1915–2005) and Fred Thieler (1916–1999). Similarly important was Emil Schumacher(1912–1999), who like Wols, Götz, Thieler, Dahmen, Hoehme and Schultze was born between 1912 and 1920 and therefore ranks among the older generation of Art Informel artists. As indeed does Bert Jäger, born in Karlsruhe in 1919. It is the tragic fate of this generation that the Second World War interrupted the emergence of an idiosyncratic early body of work for many years. In 1939 Jäger was drafted into the German Wehrmacht and deployed in Poland and Russia; he then spent five years in Soviet captivity. In 1949, back in Freiburg, he began afresh artistically, combining cubist elements with a rendering of reality magical in its New Objectivity, but also surreal.