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Die Brucke
German Expressionist Group
In 1906 Nolde joined the Berlin Sezession, an art association founded
in 1898 by Berlin artists in opposition to the conservative state run
Association of Berlin Artists. Other notable members of the group included
Max Beckmann, Hermann Struck, Max
Slevogt, Georg Kolbe, and Lovis Corinth;
and sculptors August Gaul and Ernst
Barlach. In 1906 Nolde joined the Die Brucke group, an association
of German Expressionists formed in Dresden in 1905. Other important members
included Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
(1880-1938), Fritz Bleyl (1880-1966), Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976),
Max Pechstein (1881-1955), Erich
Heckel (1883-1970) and Otto Mueller
(1874-1930). The group, often compared to Fauvism,
had a major impact on modern art while both movements shared an interest
in Primitivism/Primitive Art
and in expressing extreme emotion through the use of pure colour which
was often non-naturalistic. But Die Brucke artists often painted
city streets and physically charged scenes, which make the Fauves seem
quite tame in comparison.
Nolde's etching
and drawing revealed his instinct for fantasy
and the macabre, and his paintings at this period were almost an emotionally
heightened form of Impressionism. His powerful colour and brushstroke
influenced his Brucke friends; in return, they interested him in
their woodcuts and lithography
techniques. In 1906 Nolde had his first one man show. Unfortunately during
the next couple of years he fell out with his several of his fellow-artists
and left the Die Brucke group. But his reputation within the expressionist
movement was growing.
Liebermann and Berlin Sezession
In 1909 Nolde produced the first of a series of religious
paintings including The Last Supper (Copenhagen, Statens Museum)
and the triptych Life of St. Mary Aegyptiaca (1912). His other
painting Pentecost (1909, Bern) was refused exhibition by Max
Liebermann, president of the Berlin Sezession in 1910. Nolde published
an attack on Liebermann and was made to resign from the organisation.
Some felt his remarks were nationalist and anti-semitic in nature. Although
Nolde made several attempts to donate his religious paintings to a church,
none were ever permanently installed. The event however clarified his
aims: he would create a North German Art, void of debilitating influences
but close to people and deriving guidance from the Dutch painter Rembrandt.
In 1910, he founded the New Secession which became a rallying point
for the German avant-garde. In 1912 he was exhibiting with Wassily Kandinsky's
Der Blaue Reiter
Group, and in 1913, he joined an expedition to New Guinea to study the
art and life of the aborigines, an experience which served as a source
of primitive and oriental motifs in his paintings, such as South Sea Islander
(1914). He wrote 'Everything which is primeval and elemental captures
my imagination'.
The Prophet (Woodcut)
The Museum of Modern Art in New York houses Nolde's famous woodcut The
Prophet (1912). The Prophet's face is hollow, his eyes sunken, his
solemn countenance expresses deep emotion. Three years before Nolde executed
this print, he experienced a religious transformation while recovering
from an illness. It was after this period that he began depicting religious
paintings and prints. During the 1890s artists like Paul Gauguin and Edvard
Munch were working with dramatic woodcuts, and Nolde was influenced by
their work. Wood provided Nolde an excellent medium to create Expressionist
prints, he enjoyed the textured grain of the wood. The power of Der
Prophet, only comes out in impressions printed on Japanese paper,
a paper which is extremely rare.
Degenerate Art
In 1931 Nolde was appointed to the Prussian Academy of Art, but in 1937
he was branded a 'degenerate' by the Nazi party and over 1,000 of his
works were removed from German art museums and galleries. Other artworks
were seized; including those by Marc Chagall, Ernst Barlach, Alexander
Archipenko, Erich Heckel, Henri Matisse, James Ensor, Pablo Picasso and
Vincent van Gogh. In 1937 some of Nolde's paintings, despite his protestations,
were included in the Degenerate
Art Exhibition the same year. In 1941 he was formerly forbidden to
paint. He created some small watercolours during this time; he called
them 'Unpainted Pictures' (Ungemalte Bilder) which have been praised
in a number of retrospective exhibitions.
After the war, Nolde was once again returned to favour and was honoured
with the German Order of Merit. His main subjects were now landscapes,
portraits and flower pieces. He also created figures, heads and masks
that seem grotesque, but which he found humorous. In 1947 significant
exhibitions of his works were held in Lubeck and Kiel. He continued to
work with huge energy, producing oils based on watercolours he had created
during the war. Nolde died in 1956, at the age of 88. He established the
Ada and Emil Nolde Foundation in Seebüll, before his death, which
holds his archives and a large collection of his work.
For more about the contribution of Emile
Nolde to the evolution of European expressionism, see: History
of Expressionist Painting (c.1880-1930).
Selected Paintings
Famous works of art by Emil Nolde include
the following:
- Wheat Field (1900, private collection)
- Lesende Junge Frau (1906, Kunsthalle Kiel)
- Blumengarten (1908, Private Collection)
- Anna Wieds Garten (1907, Private Collection)
- Pentecost (1909, Staatliche Museen, Berlin)
- The Last Supper (1909, Copenhagen, Statens Museum)
- The Dance Round the Golden Calf (1910, Gallery of Modern Art,
Munich)
- The Prophet (1912, woodcut, Museum of Modern Art, New York)
- Portrait of a Young Girl (1913-14, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg)
- Tropical Sun (1914, Ada and Emil Nolde Foundation)
- Still Life With Dancers (1914, Musee National d'Art Moderne,
Paris)
- Young Black Horses (1916, Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund)
- Red Poppies (1920, Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York)
- The Dancers (1920, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart)
- Orchids (1925, private collection)
- Portrait of a Man (c.1926, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg)
- Steigende Wolken (1927, Karl-Ernst-Osthaus-Museum, Hagen)
- Grosse Sonnenblumen (1928, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York)
- The Artist and His Wife (1932, Detroit Institute of Arts)
- Blumen und Wolken (1933, Museum Sprengel, Hanover)
- Sunflowers in the Windstorm (1943, Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio)
Collections of paintings by Emile Nolde
can be seen at the Brucke Museum, Berlin-Dahlem, and the Museum Kunst
Palast, Dusseldorf, as well as a number of the best
art museums across America.
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