Emil Nolde

Emil Nolde (1867-1956) was one of the major German expressionist painters. His religious scenes, landscapes, and still lifes are distinguished by an intense coloristic richness and primitivistic angularity.

Emil Nolde, born Emil Hansen on a farm in northern Schleswig near the town of Nolde on Aug. 7, 1867, was almost totally self-taught as a painter. Until 1892 he was a wood-carver in furniture factories. He taught drawing at a museum school in St. Gall, Switzerland (1892-1898), and designed postcards with personified images of the Swiss Alps. The money earned permitted him to study painting full time in Munich. In Paris in 1899, he was impressed by Titian, Rembrandt, and Édouard Manet, but he was disappointed by the formal training he received and a year later moved to Copenhagen. His deep despondency and anguished loneliness were only partially relieved by his marriage in 1902, when the artist also changed his name to Nolde.

Up to this time Nolde's paintings had been eclectic symbolic works dependent on his Munich teachers and on Arnold Böcklin. In 1904 he adopted an impressionist manner, but the experience of Vincent Van Gogh and Edvard Munch turned him away from these soft nuances to bright pigments vehemently and freely brushed onto the canvas. Since 1898 Nolde had also been executing etchings, usually grotesques and fantasies.

In 1905 Nolde exhibited in the Berlin Secession. While he was a member of Die Brücke (The Bridge) in Dresden (1906-1907), his colors increased in brilliance and abandoned application, and he also learned woodcut and lithography techniques.

The fantastic imagery of his prints appeared in Nolde's paintings from 1909 to 1912. He expressed his mystical religious views in biblical scenes and lives of saints; the figures are heavy and primitive and have masklike faces. Masterpieces of this period are the Last Supper and Pentecost (both 1909) and the celebrated triptych Life of St. Mary Aegyptiaca (1912). Although Nolde made several attempts to donate his religious paintings, none of them was ever permanently installed in a church. Scenes from city life, seascapes, and still lifes complemented these symbolic works with subjective views of contemporary life.

When the Berlin Secession rejected his paintings in 1910, Nolde founded the New Secession and became a rallying point for the German avant-garde. He joined an expedition to New Guinea (1913-1914) to study the life and art of the aborigines, an experience which served as the source for Oriental and primitive motifs in his paintings, as in South Sea Islander (1914).

Renown and success came to Nolde in the 1920s, and in 1931 he was appointed to the Prussian Academy of Art. But in 1937 his art was declared "degenerate" by the Nazis, and his works were removed from German museums; in 1941 he was forbidden to paint. The small watercolors called "Unpainted Pictures," made secretly during this time, became known after World War II, when Nolde's significance was recognized in a number of retrospective exhibitions. He died in Seebüll on April 13, 1956.

Further Reading

Two brief monographs on Nolde are Werner Haftmann, Emil Nolde (1959), and Peter Selz, Emil Nolde (1963). Excellent background studies are Bernard S. Myers, The German Expressionists (1957), and Werner Haftmann, Painting in the Twentieth Century (rev. ed. 1965).

Additional Sources

Pois, Robert A., Emil Nolde, Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982. □

Nolde, Emil (1867–1956). German painter and printmaker, one of the most powerful representatives of Expressionism. He was born Emil Hansen, the son of a farmer, at Nolde in Schleswig-Holstein and adopted the name of his village as his surname when he married in 1902. Originally he trained as a cabinetmaker and woodcarver, and he came late to artistic maturity. In the 1890s he spent several years teaching drawing at St Gall in Switzerland, and the financial success of some comic postcards he designed showing mountains with human faces enabled him to study painting seriously—in Munich, in Dachau (in Hölzel's school), and finally at the Académie Julian in Paris, 1899–1900. The following years were very difficult for him (his wife became a semi-invalid), and he was almost 40 when he first made an impact as a painter at the 1906 exhibition of the Berlin Sezession. In the same year he became a member of Die Brücke, but he was essentially an isolated figure, standing apart from his great German contemporaries. This was a reflection of his suspicious and touchy character (he resigned from Die Brücke after 18 months and was expelled from the Sezession in 1910 after making a vicious personal attack on Max Liebermann).

In the early part of his career Nolde lived mainly in Berlin, but he moved around a good deal in Germany and travelled extensively elsewhere (in 1913–14 he visited Russia, the Far East, and the South Sea islands as part of an ethnographic expedition); however, at times he lived almost like a hermit, painting on the lonely moorlands and seashore of north Germany. His travel broadened his knowledge of the kind of primitive art that was then beginning to excite avant-garde artists, but Nolde had already established the essential features of his style before his contact with such art, and when the term ‘primitive’ is applied to his work, it refers to its brutal force, not to any exotic trappings. He was a deeply religious man and is most famous for his paintings of Old and New Testament subjects, in which he expressed intense emotion through violent colour, radically simplified drawing, and grotesque distortion (Pentecost, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, 1909). The majority of his pictures, however, were landscapes, and he was also one of the outstanding 20th-century exponents of flower painting, working with gloriously vivid colour, often in watercolour; Frank Whitford calls him ‘perhaps the greatest modern watercolourist'. Nolde also made many prints (etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts), mainly early in his career (there are few after 1926). Although he was a supporter of the Nazi Party, he was declared a degenerate artist and in 1941 was forbidden to paint. However, he executed small water-colours in secret (these are called the Ungemalte Bilder, ‘Unpainted Pictures') and from these made larger oils after the war. From 1926 he lived at Seebüll, where there is now a Nolde Foundation that has an outstanding collection of his work. An anthology of his letters was published in 1927 and his autobiography has been published in four volumes, two of them posthumous (1931, 1934, 1965, 1967); a one volume edition, Mein Leben, appeared in 1976.

Nolde, Emil (b Nolde, Schleswig-Holstein, 7 Aug. 1867; d Seebüll, 13 Apr. 1956). German painter and printmaker, one of the most powerful representatives of Expressionism. Born of a peasant family, he was originally called Emil Hansen, but he adopted the name of his village as a surname when he married in 1902. He trained as a woodcarver and came late to artistic maturity. His studies took him from his native north Germany to Munich and Paris, and from 1906 to 1907 he was a member of the Brücke in Dresden, but he was essentially an isolated figure, standing apart from his great German contemporaries. He moved around a good deal in Germany and was well travelled elsewhere (in 1913–14 he visited Russia, the Far East, and the South Sea islands as part of an ethnographic expedition), but at times he lived almost like a hermit. His travel broadened his knowledge of the kind of primitive art that was then beginning to excite avant-garde artists, but Nolde had already established the essential features of his style before his contact with such art, and when the term ‘primitive’ is applied to his work it refers to its brutal force, not to any exotic trappings. He was a deeply religious man and is now famous for his paintings of Old and New Testament subjects, in which he expresses intense emotion through violent colour, radically simplified drawing, and grotesque distortion. The majority of his pictures, however, were landscapes, and he was also one of the outstanding 20th-century exponents of flower painting, working with gloriously vivid colour, often in watercolour. He was also a prolific etcher and lithographer. Although he was a member of the Nazi Party, he was declared a degenerate artist by the Nazis and in 1941 forbidden to paint. He did, however, execute small watercolours in secret (these are called the ‘unpainted pictures’) and from these made larger oils after the war. From 1926 he lived at Seebüll, where there is now a Nolde Foundation that has an outstanding collection of his work.

Nolde, Emil (1867–1956). German painter and printmaker, one of the most powerful representatives of Expressionism. Born of a peasant family, he was originally trained as a woodcarver and came late to artistic maturity. His studies took him from his native north Germany to Munich and Paris, and from 1906 to 1907 he was a member of the Brücke in Dresden, but he was essentially an isolated figure, standing apart from his great German contemporaries. He moved around a good deal in Germany and was well travelled elsewhere (in 1913–14 he visited Russia, the Far East, and the South Sea islands as part of an ethnographic expedition), but at times he lived almost like a hermit. His travel broadened his knowledge of the kind of primitive art that was then beginning to excite avant-garde artists, but Nolde had already established the essential features of his style before his contact with such art, and when the term ‘primitive’ is applied to his work it refers to its brutal force, not to any exotic trappings. He was a deeply religious man and is now famous for his paintings of Old and New Testament subjects, in which he expresses intense emotion through violent colour, radically simplified drawing, and grotesque distortion. The majority of his pictures, however, were landscapes, and he was also one of the outstanding 20th-century exponents of flower painting, working with gloriously vivid colour, often in watercolour. He was also a prolific etcher and lithographer. Although he was a member of the Nazi Party, he was declared a degenerate artist by the Nazis and in 1941 forbidden to paint. He did, however, execute small watercolours in secret (these are called the ‘unpainted pictures’) and from these made larger oils after the war. From 1926 he lived at Seebüll, where there is now a Nolde Foundation that has an outstanding collection of his work.

Emil Nolde , 1867–1956, German expressionist painter and graphic artist. His original name was Emil Hansen. After teaching in Switzerland (1892–98), Nolde traveled through Europe and in 1906 joined the Brücke group of German expressionists. Nolde's explosively colored paintings were continually refused by the Berlin secession group. In protest Nolde wrote an open letter to Max Liebermann , president of the secession, and thereby started a bitter controversy. In 1911 he helped found the New Secession. Nolde's most powerful work was his exploration of the supernatural (demonic heads, mystic appearances, and religious images). His woodcut The Prophet (1912; National Gall. of Art, Washington, D.C.) is a terrible, savage image of pain. He painted bold, arresting landscapes and applied his expressionist technique to produce notable oils and watercolors of flowers (e.g., Flowers, Mus. of Modern Art, New York City). His masklike portraits conjure up a world of primitive emotions. Violent, clashing colors are combined with exaggerated distortions of shape. Among of his well-known paintings are Christ among the Children (Mus. of Modern Art, New York City) and Ripe Sunflowers (Inst. of Arts, Detroit). Nolde's work was condemned and largely confiscated by the Nazi regime.

Bibliography: See his Unpainted Pictures, ed. by W. Haftmann (tr. 1965, rev. ed. 1972) and Landscapes, ed. by M. Urban (tr. 1970); studies by W. Haftmann (tr. 1959) and P. Selz (1963).

Nolde, Emil (1867–1956) German painter and graphic artist who exemplified expressionism. He trained as a wood-carver before turning to painting relatively late. He painted his subjects (often flowers or landscapes) with deep, glowing colours and simplified outlines, bringing the works to the borders of abstract art. Although Nolde was a member of Die Brücke (1905–07), he was essentially a solitary figure.

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