After the First World War, Marie Wolfrum (1883–1967) purchased Josef Löwy – k. u. k. Hof-Photograph, Kunst- und Verlags-Anstalt founded in 1850 with its inventory, where since 1896 she had trained and later worked as a salesperson and manager. On 2 October 1919 she established the studio as Kunstverlag Wolfrum with the object of trading and publishing artworks. The shop at Burgring 5 in Vienna's 1st district and a branch at Kohlmarkt 4 existed until 1928. The businessman Rudolf Wittig (1881–1958) became a partner in 1919, and Marie Wolfrum was the owner-partner. The premises, which still exist today, in Palais Lobkowitz, Augustinerstraße 10 in the 1st district, were rented in 1925/26 and enlarged and adapted over the years. At the end of 1926, Marie Wolfrum also registered as trading in paintings, sculptures, antiques and carpets, and two years later also added a publishing and retail book business. Her son Herbert Wolfrum (1911–1965) entered the company in 1933 as publisher and soon took over the direction and developed the publishing with his wife Helga Wolfrum, née Rauchenbichler. Composition proceedings were initiated in 1934 at the commercial court in Vienna, which safeguarded the company's continued operation.

After the annexation in 1938, the company was able to continue successfully, with a marked increase in sales from paintings and the publishing activities. Close connections with the NSDAP leadership and affiliated bodies are not evident from the documentation available, but there were business contacts with high-ranking representatives of the Nazi regime, such as the antiquarian and Reich department head of art and cultural affairs Ernst Schulte-Strathaus (1881–1968) in the "Brown House" in Munich. On 2 May 1938, Kunstverlag Wolfrum sent him an oil painting by Rudolf von Alt, Portal of the Church on Nonnberg of unclear provenance, which he purchased for Hitler in 1939. There is also a documented connection with the art dealer Johannes Jantzen from the Bremer Werkschau, who sold art objects purchased from Wolfrum for the "Sonderauftrag Linz" (Linz museum project). From the early 1920s Kunstverlag Wolfrum also had business contacts with the Österreichische Galerie (ÖG), which purchased artworks by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Jakob Alt, Franz Xaver Gruber, Josef Mathias Grassi between 1939 and 1945 and numerous books between 1943 and 1946. The publishing manager Herbert Wolfrum, who had excellent connections with the Vienna gallery and museum scene and became a partner in 1943, was made sole authorized signatory for the company in 1953. His wife Helga Wolfrum became sole Prokurist, after the two had deposed an affidavit with the commercial court in Vienna stating that they had never been members or applicants for membership of the NSDAP. After Rudolf Wittig (1958), Herbert Wolfrum (1965) and Marie Wolfrum (1967) died, their grandchildren continued the company as sole partners.

Of the acquisitions by the ÖG from Kunstverlag Wolfrum, the Art Restitution Advisory Board in 2006 recommended the restitution of the portrait Friedrich Eltz by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller to the legal successors of Vally Honig-Roeren, who had been persecuted and later murdered by the Nazi regime. The sale was initiated in 1940 but only finalized in 1942 in an exchange between the ÖG and Wolfrum. The transfer to the heirs after Honig-Roeren took place in 2023. The restitution of Jakob Alt's Cholera Chapel near Baden, sold in 1939 by Galerie Wolfrum to the ÖG, to the legal successors of Ludwig Neurath was recommended in 2010 and carried out in 2011. Neurath had been obliged to sell the painting in preparation for flight before it was acquired by the ÖG from Marie Wolfrum. Recommendations were made in 2019 for the restitution of the two Waldmüller portraits of Johann and Magdalena Werner to the legal successors of Gertrude Felsövanyi. In 1939 Felsövanyi had left the two works with Anna Seitle, who had been authorized to administer the remaining assets. She subsequently sold the pictures to Kunsthandlung Wolfrum, which sold them to the ÖG. In the same year, the Städtische Sammlungen (now Wien Museum) purchased a bust by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt that might have originally belonged to Gertrude Felsövanyi. In 2012 the Vienna Restitution Commission failed to recommend the restitution of the work, entitled The Strong Smell, as it could not be clearly established that it had been part previously of the Felsövanyi collection.