Nolde, Emil (ā`mēl nôl`də), 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 Brücke, Die [Ger.,=the bridge], German expressionist art movement, lasting from 1905 to 1913. Influenced by the art of Jugendstil (the German equivalent of art nouveau), Van Gogh, and the primitive sculpture of Africa and the South Seas, the
..... Click the link for more information. 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 Liebermann, Max (mäks lē`bərmän'), 1847–1935, German genre painter and etcher.
..... Click the link for more information. , 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

orig. Emil Hansen

(born Aug. 7, 1867, Nolde, near Bocholt, Ger.—died April 15, 1956, Seebüll, near Niebüll, W.Ger.) German Expressionist painter, printmaker, and watercolourist. Born to a peasant family, he carved wood for a living and came late to painting. Though briefly a member of Die Brücke (1906–07), he was essentially a solitary painter. Fervently religious and racked by a sense of sin, he created such works as Dance Around the Golden Calf (1910), in which the figures' erotic frenzy and demonic faces are rendered with deliberately crude draftsmanship and dissonant colours. On an ethnological expedition to the East Indies (1913–14), he was impressed by the power of the art he saw there. Back in Europe, he produced brooding landscapes (e.g., Marsh Landscape, 1916) and colourful flowers. As a printmaker he was noted especially for the stark black-and-white effect of his crudely incised woodcuts. Although he was an early advocate of Germany's National Socialist Party, the party declared his art “degenerate” and forbade him to paint. His late, postwar works reveal his disillusionment.