Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Wolfe moved to England during the First World War where he studied at the Slade School of Art* from 1916-1918. At the Slade he met and became friends with Nina Hamnet and Roger Fry who invited him to join the Omega Workshops*, a design enterprise founded by members of the Bloomsbury Group* and closely associated with the Hogarth Press.

Wolfe had his first solo show in Johannesburg in 1920 and went on to exhibit widely both in England and internationally. In the 1920s he became known as 'England's Matisse' in reference to his strikingly colourful post-impressionistic portraits.

His success owed much to his involvement with the London Group of artists and his association with art critic and painter Roger Fry and the writer Osbert Sitwell. Wolfe's work is held by the Tate Gallery, the Royal Academy and the National Portrait Gallery, London as well as numerous other public and private collections.


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Edward Wolfe was born in Johannesburg in 1897, studying at the Slade School from 1911 until 1918. He worked at the Omega Workshops with Roger Fry, at the London Group, National Society, 7 & 5 Society, and the London Artists' Association. His first one-man exhibition was at the Mayor Gallery in London, 1925. Wolfe worked in South Africa 1919-21, Paris 1922, Italy 1923, Spain and Morocco 1927, New York, Mexico 1934-7, and again in South Africa 1956-8.