“Pictures are spiritual beings. The
soul of the painter lives within them.”
Emil Nolde
Emil Nolde
It
has been said that the German expressionist artist Emil Nolde had read only one
book during his life and that being the Bible during his childhood under the
influence of his protestant peasant parents. An influence that regulated
education secondary to that of inspiration for the artist.
And
about which Nolde has said “What an artist learns matters little. What he
himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary
incitement to work.”
Born
as Emil Hansen, he adopted the name Nolde from the village
adjacent to his parent’s farm in his mid-thirties after moving to Berlin in
1902.
As a child Nolde, unlike his
siblings, drew and painted whenever he could and at the age of 17 he studied to
become a carver and illustrator and as a young adult worked in furniture
factories whilst painting and drawing in his spare time. The proceeds from a series
of postcards he produced in his early thirties gave him the financial security
to become an independent artist.
Working with oil paint, watercolors
and printmaking Nolde’s depictions of urban nightlife, biblical scenes,
flower motifs, and landscapes along with the primitivism of his exotic
figures and masks, inspired by a visit to the South Seas, are considered
to be amongst the best of German Expressionism.
Although being a member of the Nazi party from the early 1920’s,
Nolde was declared to be a degenerate artist in 1937 and four years
later banned him from making any art at all. During this prohibition Nolde made
some 1300 watercolors in secret many of which became the basis for his later
works made after the Second World War.
For as he has said “Art is exalted above religion and race. Not a single
solitary soul these days believes in the religions of the Assyrians, the
Egyptians and the Greeks... Only their art, whenever it was beautiful, stands
proud and exalted, rising above all time.”
The
exhibition Nolde in Hamburg is currently on show at The
Hamburger Kunsthalle until the 10th of February 2016.