Paul Wunderlich had some groupies. Though it’s more likely that these art-loving young ladies scaling the MIA in 1969 were on the prowl for fellow Wunderlich fans, not the artist himself.
It’s not hard to understand why: The German surrealist painter, printmaker, and sculptor, whose name literally means “strange” in his native tongue, was known for for his prints of nude women lounging unnervingly in empty white rooms, the kind of ’60s psychedelic naïfs you find on Led Zeppelin and Blind Faith album covers. A guy who liked Wunderlich’s decadent lithographs might have had a Jaguar with a carpeted interior, an awesome stereo, and an empty bucket seat.
Wunderlich was utterly out of step with the cool, minimalist avant-garde of the art world then, but presaged the seamy side of pop culture, especially fashion. Versace commissioned Wunderlich to design a line of porcelain. The London Suede, one of those louche 1990s bands that were really about the clothes, modified one of his illustrations for an album cover, their designer gleefully predicting “it would be realistic, it would be psychedelic, and it would be sexy and [messed] up and drugged up.” Um, cool, man.
Watch for more Once at MIA flashbacks every Monday at MIA Stories.