"World" is the most ambitious work of Gustav Wolf, a German-Jewish printmaker and book illustrator, who held the position of Professor of Graphics at the Badischen Landeskunstschule in Karlsruhe, Germany before immigrating to the northeastern United States in 1938. These dynamic compositions are drawn from a portfolio of thirteen untitled prints that envision the creation of the world. Wolf unleashed the full force of his imagination and his extraordinary abilities as a woodcut artist to render the tumultuous and meteoric unfolding of primal events—from land masses exploding outwards and upwards to the first flourishing of plant and animal life. The series concludes with a shimmering vision of water, sky, and celestial bodies book-ended by the word "Ausgang" (exit) and, fittingly, the artist’s name.