Nolde’s life and work
was characterised by opposing ideologies
forces and identities,
and he was deeply aware of these tensions.
His paintings tell the story of an artist
at the forefront
of the expressionist Avant-Garde
using colour and form in a bold visionary way,
yet he struggled to find acceptance.
He was too conservative for the Avant-Garde,
too radical for the establishment,
too modern for traditionalists.
But out of the tensions and contradictions
of Nolde's life
emerge a ground-breaking
and prolific body of work.
In the early twentieth century
most aspiring artists looked to
the prevailing style of French Impressionism
for inspiration.
Nolde accepted the importance of
Impressionism for the nineteenth century
but saw this style as too superficial,
too sentimental,
and too realistic
for the twentieth century.
He joined a group of artists called
Die Brücke
pioneers of German Expressionism
who abandoned realistic representations
in favour of exaggerations
and distortions of line and colour.
They wanted art to go deeper
to express the very spirit
of life and nature.
For Nolde, colour was
the supreme means of expression.
He said: “Colour is strength, strength is life”.
Nolde claimed that the Bible
was the only book he had ever read
and was immensely proud
of his religious paintings.
But his Biblical artwork lacks
any of the restraint you may expect
from a devout European Protestant.
They're earthy, physical,
agonized, erotic.
In his painting Ecstasy
Nolde presents us
with the possibility of
a not so immaculate conception.
The sexual and the sacred are presented
as the same spiritual life force
surging through Mary's body.
It is a bold dualism
the hot and the holy
as one on the canvas.
Nolde was a nationalist
with a conflicted nationality.
He was born in 1867
in Northern Germany
in a territory that later became
part of Denmark.
He had a Danish passport
but felt deeply German.
He seemed torn between country and city settings
a provincial painter
who celebrated the land and the sea of his native
Northern Germany and Denmark in the summer.
Yet he and his wife returned each winter
to explore his fascination with the people
in the cafés, cabarets, and theatres of Berlin.
Nolde was never happier than when
he was cut off from the world
at his home in the Northern flatlands
between the North and Baltic seas;
but he also travelled widely
and championed the art
of different nations.
He was openly critical of colonialism
and his exotic paintings of tribal scenes
reveal a deep interest in racial identity
and the unique essence of different nations.
Nolde enthusiastically supported
the Nationalist Socialist's
vision for Germany.
He perhaps also sensed an opportunity
to be celebrated as a truly German artist
but his paintings were stylistically
too modern, too challenging,
and too similar to the
international modern art
that the Nazis hated.
His art was branded degenerate
by the Nazi party in 1937.
Emil Nolde had over a thousand works confiscated
as part of Hitler's campaign
against Avant-Garde art.
He was displayed more prominently
than any other artist
in the humiliating exhibition
of degenerate art
that toured the major cities of Germany.
As a degenerate artist
Nolde was forbidden from exhibiting his work
and was prohibited from purchasing art materials;
and while he remained faithful to the Nazi party
he was in effect banished back home
to Northern Germany.
Despite his personal devastation
over his treatment by the Nazi party
Nolde’s status as a degenerate artist
ironically gave his art more breathing space.
His exile did not suppress
his artistic production during the war.
Instead of large oil paintings
Nolde produced over a thousand
small scale watercolours
which he called his “unpainted pictures”.
Nolde let his imagination and colours run wild
Mythical beasts emerge in fantasy landscapes,
grotesque heads fight for space
in claustrophobic compositions
the paper stained and re-stained with pigment
to create an intense beauty.
In these watercolours
there's a sense of the contrasts
and contradictions of his life.
The expressionist and the romantic,
the Northern and the German,
the modern and the primal,
the real and the spiritual
finding a sense of harmony
and always vibrant colour
and bold form
at the heart of his innovative work.