Emil Nolde (7 August 1867 – 13 April 1956) was a German painter and printmaker.
He was one of the first Expressionists, a member of Die Brücke, and is
considered to be one of the great oil painting and watercolour painters of the
20th century. He is known for his vigorous brushwork and expressive choice of
colors. Golden yellows and deep reds appear frequently in his work, giving a
luminous quality to otherwise somber tones. His watercolors include vivid,
brooding storm-scapes and brilliant florals.
Nolde's intense preoccupation with the subject of flowers reflect his continuing
interest in the art of Vincent Van Gogh.
He was born as Emil Hansen near the village of Nolde, (now part of the Danish
municipality of Burkal), Province of Schleswig-Holstein. He was raised on a
farm; his parents, devout Protestants, were Frisian and Danish peasants. Between
1884 and 1888, he trained as a craftsman and worked in woodcarving, and worked
in furniture factories as a young adult. In 1889, he gained entrance into the
School of Applied Arts in Karlsruhe before becoming a drawing instructor in
Switzerland from 1892 to 1898, eventually leaving this job to finally pursue his
dream of becoming an independent artist. As a child had loved to paint and draw,
but he was already 31 by the time he pursued a career as an artist. When he was
rejected by the Munich Academy of Fine Arts in 1898, he spent the next three
years taking private painting classes and visiting Paris and becoming familiar
with the contemporary impressionist scene that was popular at this time. He
married Danish actress Ada Vilstrup in 1902 and moved to Berlin, where he would
meet collector Gustav Schiefler and artist Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, both of whom
would advocate his work later in life. He spent a brief time between 1906-1907
as a member of the revolutionary expressionist group Die Brücke, and a member of
the Berlin Secession in 1908-1910, but he eventually left or was expelled from
both of these groups – biographical foreshadowing of the difficulty Nolde had
maintaining relationships with the organizations to which he belonged. He had
achieved some fame by this time and was exhibiting with Kandinsky’s Der Blaue
Reiter group in 1912, supporting himself through his art.[1] From 1902 he called
himself after his birthplace.
He realized the farm life was not for him and that he and his three brothers
were nothing alike. Between 1884 and 1891, he studied to become a carver and
illustrator in Flensburg. He spent his years of travel in Munich, Karlsruhe and
Berlin. From 1906 to 1907 he was a member of the artist group Die Brücke (The
Bridge).
Nolde was a supporter of the Nazi party from the early 1920s, having become a
member of its Danish section. He expressed negative opinions about Jewish
artists, and considered Expressionism to be a distinctively Germanic style. This
view was shared by some other members of the Nazi party, notably Joseph Goebbels.
However Hitler rejected all forms of modernism as "degenerate art", and Nolde's
work was officially condemned by the Nazi regime. Until that time he had been
held in great prestige in Germany. 1052 of his works were removed from museums,
more than any other artist.[2] Some were included in the Degenerate Art
exhibition of 1937, despite his protests, including (later) a personal appeal to
Nazi gauleiter Baldur von Schirach in Vienna. He was not allowed to paint—even
in private—after 1941. Nevertheless, during this period he created hundreds of
watercolors, which he hid. He called them the "Unpainted Pictures".
In 1942 Nolde wrote:
There is silver blue, sky blue and thunder blue. Every colour holds within it a
soul, which makes me happy or repels me, and which acts as a stimulus. To a
person who has no art in him, colours are colours, tones tones...and that is
all. All their consequences for the human spirit, which range between heaven to
hell, just go unnoticed.
After World War II, Nolde was once again honoured, receiving the German Order of
Merit, the country's highest civilian decoration. He died in Seebüll (now part
of Neukirchen).
Apart from paintings, Nolde's work includes many prints, often in color and
watercolor paintings of various sizes, including landscapes, religious images,
flowers, stormy seas and scenes from Berlin nightlife. A famous series of
paintings covers the German New Guinea Expedition, visiting the South Seas,
Moscow, Siberia, Korea, Japan, and China. The Schiefler Catalogue raisonné of
his prints describes 231 etchings, 197 woodcuts, 83 lithographs, and 4
hectographs.
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