Already in 1923 Wilhelm Wessel had first personal contact with Schwitters and Kandinsky. In April and May of the following year he worked under Kandinsky at the Bauhaus in Weimar. This was followed by a four month job as a designer of book covers for the Czech publishing house Dobré Dilo and afterwards by a teaching position at the German secondary school and the French St. Benoît College in Istanbul. From 1925 on Wessel undertook study trips through Greece and the Near East. From 1928 to 1931 he studied Near Eastern archaeology and painting in Berlin at first under Ceasr Klein and later under Karl Hofer at the Staatliche Hochschule für freie und angewandte Kunst. During these years he undertook study trips to Paris and London. After his degree for teaching arts Wessel worked as a teacher from 1931 to 1939 in Berlin and Westphalia. After the end of the war and his return from war imprisonment he lived as a freelance painter in Iserlohn. From the 50s on he spent several times each year in the Mediterranean region and Paris to work on his arts. Between 1951 and 1958 Wessel was chairman of the Westdeutscher Künstlerbund and organised the first German exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1954. During the 1960s the artist travelled to New York, Peru and the Bahamas. Wilhelm Wessels died in Iserlohn in 1971. During the last decades his works were presented at numerous one-man shows (et al. Karl-Ernst-Osthaus-Museum Hagen 1946, Galerie Stadler Paris 1956-63, Landesmuseum Münster 1973) and group exhibitions (et al. XXIX Biennale Venice 1958, international art fai 'Art Basel' 1970 and 1973) at home and abroad.