Emil Schumacher (1912–1999) was part of the new departure in art after 1945, a generation of artists that debated Bauhaus dogmas and sought the free expressiveness of Informal Art, aspiring to the materiality of the painting and its violation in an act of destruction. In the fifties, Schumacher’s paintings began attracting international interest, as testified to by his participation in documenta II and III in Kassel, the Venice Biennale and São Paulo Biennal, as well as his visiting professorship in Minneapolis. Op and Pop Art posed new challenges to him in the late sixties. His artistic reaction was surprising: his journeys to North Africa, Tunisia, Morocco, as well as Iraq were followed by a return to representationalism from which emerged a series of what are arguably the most impressive paintings of his late career.