In what style did Emil Nolde write? Biography

May 16th, 2014 , 03:09 pm

Today I decided to talk about one of my favorite artists. This is the German expressionist Emil Nolde.

There are artists who inspire me on some special level. Nolzhe’s album has been on my wish-list for a long time and I look at his paintings with special trepidation.
Many will say that these are masterpieces from the “oh, what can I do here?!” masterpieces. Yes, I don’t draw anymore - I’ll do those too!” But nothing like that, unfortunately... If it were so simple, there would be different feelings.

Looking at Nolde’s work, at his riot of color, I want to immediately take the paints and start moving. It's MOVEMENT! Look at the landscapes - the clouds are about to float and somewhere a ray of the breaking sun will sparkle.

“There is silver blue, blue blue and storm blue. And each color has its own strength, power that either makes you happy or pushes you away, causes rejection. For those people who are not involved in art, colors remain just colors, and the shades are just shades. That's all. And their impact on the human spirit, wandering between heaven and hell, also goes unnoticed" Emil Nolde (c)

Emil Nolde is one of the leading German expressionist artists and is considered one of the greatest watercolor painters of the 20th century. Studied at the Flensburg School artistic crafts to the carver and artist. He took a pseudonym in honor of his home village of Nolde. Entered art group“The Bridge”, met Munch there.

Below is a selection of his works that I like the most.

I try my best to avoid topics of politics, religion, national movements, etc. But I guess I’ll leave this here.

In 1941, the master was ordered to “immediately stop” painting. Nolde finally left Berlin and moved to the North Sea, where back in 1927 he built a house-workshop in Seebühl (Holstein); I almost never left there after the end of the war and the collapse of Nazism. Nolde retired to Seebühl, where he secretly painted small watercolors, later calling them his “unwritten paintings.” In total, Nolde painted about 1,300 watercolors. The life of Emil Nolde, deprived of the right to creativity, is described in the novel “The German Lesson” by Siegfried Lenz.

Born into a peasant family. I studied wood carving at G. Za-uer-ma's furniture factory and at the School of Art Wood Carving Vu in Flensburg (1884-1888), then worked in the quality of cutting-chi-ka and ri-so-val-schi-ka on furniture factories in Munich, Karlsruhe (where I once attended the School of Art and Crafts) and Berli -Not.

In 1892-1897, he was a lecturer at the Pro-mysh-len-no-re-mes-len-museum in St. Gal-len (Switzerland) ), began to in-te-re-co-vate modern literature and art, the same way for al-pi-niz-mom. Already in his early creative work, he turned to ak-va-re-li, a tech-ni-ku that was all the time so-ver-shen-st- vo-val (pei-za-zhi; “Port-ret young-lo-doy de-vush-ki”, 1898, Nol-de Foundation, Ze-bull), first car-ti-na mas-lom - “Mountain ve-li-ka-ny” (1895-1896). I also used the same ri-sun-ki for the “mountain postal cards.”

He studied at the art school of F. Fehr in München (1898) and with A. Hölze-l in Da-hau (1899), majoring in technical no etching. Po-se-til Mi-lan, Ve-nu; In museums I studied the works of modern artists. In the years 1899-1900 in Pa-ri-zhe for-no-mal-sya in the academic academy of R. Zhu-lia-na (1900), he knew with the creative by E. De-ha, E. Ma-ne and V. Van Go-ga; at the World Exhibition of 1900, his special interest attracted non-European cultural tours (art in the world).

Since 1902, he chose a pseudonym named after his native village; in 1903-1916 he lived mainly on the island. Al-sen. In 1904-1905 he visited Italy; Upon returning home, I learned the work of P. Go-gen at his per-so-nal exhibition in Wis-mar. In Ber-li-ne he created a series of engravings “Fan-ta-zia”, from his own-about-ra-zi-em tech-ni-ki and you-ra-zi -tel-no-styu artistic language. The bright colorism and spontaneity of the writing of his early paintings (“Weight in a room,” 1904, Nol-de Foundation, etc.) with -did the attention of the doctors of the Drez-den-sko-go-e-di-ne-niya “Bridge”; in 1906-1907 E. Nolde was a member of this association. In 1907, in Berlin, he became acquainted with E. Munch; elected a member of the Berlin Se-ces-sion (1908), after a break-up with this body, he became one of the -ga-ni-za-to-ditch “No-vo-go Se-ces-sio-na” in Ber-lin (1910-1912).

Since the late 1900s - early 1910s, the non-re-creative image of E. Nolde has been fully stocked as one one of the main representatives of the German ex-pres-sio-niz-ma. Drink to E. Nolde with their “colors-you-are-bu-ry-mi”, with dramatic tension in their vision -nia of the world (“Garden at Burhard”, 1907, Westphalian Museum of Art and Culture, Münster; “Red and Yellow -tye roses", 1907, Museum Wal-ra-fa-Ri-har-tsa, Cologne; "Ku-ril-schi-tsa si-ga-ret", 1907, Nol-de Foundation; “Garden of Flowers”, 1908, Hudozhestenny Museum, Dussel-dorf).

In the series “Autumn of the Sea” (I-XIX; 1910-1911) he runs with thick red layers , green, os-le-pi-tel-but white colors, alarmingly flashing on an almost black background and creating the feeling of fan-tas-ma-go-rich-no-sti nature (to the sea-landscapes E. Nolde will return to the pro- gravity of the whole creative path).

At one time, in the works, on the nightlife of Ber-lin and theat-ral-ny-mi in the-new- ka-mi M. Reinhard-ta (“In the night cafe”, “At the table with wine”, both 1911; “Ta-nets among the candles”, 1912 , everything is the Nol-de fund), apparently a gro-te-sk-no-fan-ta-stic na-cha-lo, getting the furthest time -vi-tie in a series of two-figured com-po-zi-tions with per-so-na-zha-mi-mas-ka-mi (“Warrior and woman” , 1913; “The Prince and the Lie-ni-tsa”, 1918, both - Nol-de Foundation; “Mech-ta-tel”, 1919, Spren-gel Museum, Gan-no-ver) . In these car-ti-nahs the artist creates a gro-te-sk-ty-po-log-gy of human passions and their conflicts -niy in dramatic si-tua-tsi-yah.

In 1911, he visited Belgium and the Netherlands with the aim of studying the paintings of Rembrandt and F. Hals; po-se-til J. En-so-ra. The most important place in the work of E. Nolde, 1909-1913, is the religious theme: the cycle of paintings “The Secret World” -che-rya" ("Par-cha-tie"; State Museum of Art, Ko-pen-ga-gen), "Trinity" (Old National Gallery, Berlin ) and “In the Hand of Christ” (Museum of the Bridge Observatory, Berlin; all 1909); “Christ and Children” (1910, Museum of Modern Art, New York), trip-tich “Le-gen-da about Mary of Egypt” (Kun-st-hal- le, Hamburg); 9-part lyric “The Life of Christ” for the church of Neu-kir-he in Ny-bul-le (1911-1912, now in von-de Nol-de) - one of his most significant pro-from-ve-de-tions, in which the Evan-Gelic images, pa-ra-dok-sal-but-so-che - melting rough primordial nature with sharp gro-te-sk-no-ness, in fact un-used by the power of emotions - from ra-do-st-no-oza-re-niya to pain and suffering, and the pa-the-tical power of kra-sok reaches its apo-gay .

In 1913-1914, E. Nolde made the journey to New Guinea (via Russia, China, Korea, Japan, -lip-pi-ny) in conjunction with a hundred eth-no-graphic ex-pe-di-tions. God-like impressions from knowing the eco-zo-ti-coy of the East, the culture and life of the people of the Ocean you have seen in his numerous works (“Tro-pi-che-sun”, “Family”, both - Nol-de Foundation; “Tro- Pi-che-sky forest", there is also the City of Kun-st-hal-le, Bi-le-feld, all 1914; "Nature-mort", 1915, Nol-de fund). Upon his return, E. Nolde, from 1916, settled in the house “Uten-warf”, not far from his native village, from 1927 for years until the end of his life he lived in a house built on his own. pro-ek-tu in Ze-bul-le, from time to time making trips to European countries (Ve-li-ko-bri-ta-nu , France, Italy, Switzerland; in Spain he studied the paintings of D. Vela-ske-sa and F. Goya and created a large -li-che-st-vo ak-va-re-lei).

In the 1920-1930s, E. Nolde continued to work on the previously established thematic re-per-tua: northern landscapes and views of the southern seas (“Sea-re”, 1930, Tate Gallery, London), types of masks, com-po-zi-tions on religious issues -you. His living concept does not change, but the forms become more generalized, the figures become -gi-va-yut-sya in a dense composition (“I-ku-she-nie Io-si-fa”, 1921; “Iu-da at the first-priest -kov", 1922, both - Nol-de Foundation). He also worked in technical graphics (“Ka-fe-shan-tan III”, 1907, “Tan-tsov-schi-tsa”, 1913, and etc.) and grav-vu-ry on de-re-ve [including “Pro-rock” (1912; see illustration to the article Xi-lo-graphy), “Youth pa-ra" (1917)].

Dis-cre-di-ta-tion came-to-power in Germany on-tsio-nal-so-cia-li-sta-mi since-time (“you-ro-div-she-go-xya”) of art was on-the-right-le-na before everything against E. Nolde and E. Bar-la-ha. In 1937, the authorities confiscated 1052 of his works from the museums (part of the co-burning). At the Munich exhibition “De-ge-ne-ra-tiv-no-go is-kus-st-va” (1937) there were 29 car- teen E. Nolde; in 1940, most of the work in his workshop was the same, it was for-no-mother with creativity. E. Nolde came from emig-ri-ro-vat; in 1941 he was expelled from the Imperial Palace of Arts. The artist continued to work in secret; about 1 thousand small ak-va-re-lei, created by them before the end of the war, called. "not-na-pi-san-nyh car-tin." Works mainly on the rice-bu-ma-ge, before-va-ri-tel-but uv-laz-nyon-noy, it is vir-tu-oz-but used -there are great possibilities for ak-va-re-li. Under his brush, spon- tan-but fuss- ing misty, exciting, drink-for-lives, blossoming-blooming flowers, for-thoughts -cheerful or laughing faces, fi-gu-ry for-ga-daughters, fan-ta-stistic characters. Random floats and thickening of paint in combination with targeted smears when they form a special sug- gestive expression (“Unequal couple”, “Men and women”, “ Burning fortress”, “The sea and the red sun”, all - the Zero Foundation). After the end of the war, according to the mo-ti-you, “not-on-pi-san-nyh pictures” E. Nolde wrote over 100 po-lo-ten. According to him, in Ze-byul-le in 1957, the main museum was founded by the foundation of Ada (the wife of hu-dozh-nik) and Emi-la Nol-de.

Essays:

Briefe aus den Jahren 1894-1926 / Hrsg. M. Sauerlandt. B., 1927. Hamb., 1967;

Das eigene Leben, 1867-1902. 8. Aufl. Köln, 2002;

Jahre der Kämpfe, 1902-1914. 7. Aufl. Köln, 2002;

Welt und Heimat, 1913-1918. 4. Aufl. Köln, 2002;

Reisen, Ächtung, Befreiung, 1919-1946. 6. Aufl. Köln, 2002;

Mein Leben. 2. Aufl. Cologne, 2008.

Emil Nolde (German Emil Nolde, real name Hans Emil Hansen; August 7, 1867, Nolde, Prussia, - April 13, 1956, Seebühl, Germany) - one of the leading German expressionist artists, considered one of the greatest watercolorists of the 20th century. Nolde became famous for his expressive color schemes.

Emil Nolde was born on August 7, 1867 in the town of Nolde, a few kilometers from Tonder, and was the fourth of five children in the family. Until 1920, this territory was part of Prussia and thus part of the North German Confederation. After the territory was transferred to Denmark, Nolde received Danish citizenship, which he retained for the rest of his life. His father was a North Frisian by nationality. Emil attended a German school and believed that he had a mixture of Schleswig and Frisian blood.

The youthful years of Emil, the youngest of four sons in the family, were spent in poverty and filled with hard work.

In 1884-1891, Emil Nolde studied at the Flensburg School of Arts and Crafts as a carver and artist. Nolde participated in the restoration of the Bruggeman altar in the Schleswig Cathedral. On his study tour, Nolde visited Munich, Karlsruhe and Berlin.

After 1902, Emil took a pseudonym in honor of his home village of Nolde. Until 1903, Nolde still painted lyrical landscapes. In 1906-1907, Emil Nolde was a member of the art group "Bridge" and there he met Edvard Munch. In 1909, Nolde became a member of the Berlin Secession. At this time his first works appeared on religious themes: “Communion”, “Trinity”, “Rocky”. In 1910-1912, Nolde had his first success at exhibitions in Hamburg, Essen and Hagen. Nolde also painted about nightlife Berlin, where his actress wife periodically lived, theatrical sketches, still lifes of masks, 20 works “Autumn Sea” and “The Life of Christ” in nine parts. In 1913-1914, Nolde traveled to the Southern Hemisphere as a member of the German-New Guinea Medical and Demographic Expedition under the Imperial Colonial Office. In 1916 Nolde moved to Utenwarf on the west coast near Tonder. Nolde reacted negatively to the clashes and the establishment of the German-Danish border after the First World War, and despite the fact that he considered himself German, he took Danish citizenship in 1920.

After the drainage of the lands of Utenwarf, Nolde moved with his Danish wife Ada Vilstrup to German territory, where the terrain reminded him of his native Nolde. On the high hill of Seebühl in Neukirchen, the Nolde couple first purchased an old house, and a few years later the Noldes built in its place according to their own design new house with a workshop, towering above the surrounding area like a medieval fortress. There was room in the house for a workshop and for works painted here.

For the 60th anniversary of Nolde in 1927, a anniversary exhibition artist.

Nolde had long been convinced of the “superiority of German art.” In 1934 he joined the National Socialist labor organization Northern Schleswig (NSAN), which during the Gleichshaltung became part of the Danish branch of the NSDAP. However, the National Socialists recognized Nolde’s work as degenerate: “The Life of Christ” turned out to be one of the central exhibits of the famous propaganda exhibition “Degenerate Art”; more than a thousand of Nolde’s works were confiscated, some were sold, and some were destroyed. In 1941, Nolde was forbidden to write, and the embittered Nolde retired to Seebühl, where he secretly painted small watercolors and buried them in the ground, later calling them his “unpainted paintings.” In total, Nolde painted about 1,300 watercolors.

After 1945, Nolde received honor and numerous exhibitions. His wife died in 1946, and two years later Nolde married Jolanta Erdmann. Until 1951, Nolde painted about a hundred more paintings and many watercolors. They are considered the crown and result of his work. Emil Nolde took part in documenta 1 in 1955, his work was presented after his death at documenta II in 1959 and at documenta III 1964 in Kassel. Emil Nolde was buried in Seebühl next to his wife.

This is part of a Wikipedia article used under the CC-BY-SA license. Full text articles here →

German modernism is like a treasure chest, the more you explore it, the more you get carried away, and some kind of greed begins to overcome you, so you “appropriated” the diamonds - Kirchner and Beckmann, and the emerald - Paula Modersohn-Becker, and you want more “fill your pockets” with pearls and gold. That’s how it was Emil Nolde’s turn. The range of this artist is quite narrow - flowers, fantastic seascapes, biblical scenes. His arsenal of themes was greatly enriched by a trip to the exotic islands of the Pacific Ocean. But the point is not what he painted, but how he did it. Flip through this virtual magazine and you will understand that Nolde’s work deserves your attention, especially since he is not very well known in Russia, although there are resources dedicated to him on the RuNet.

Emil Nolde - BRILLIANT COUNTRY

Dance around the Golden Calf.1910

On the lake. 1910.

Emil Nolde.Self-portrait.1917

The artist Emil Nolde (real name Hansen) was born in 1867 on the German-Danish border, near the village of Nolde (the name of the village became his creative pseudonym), on his mother's farm. Nine generations of her ancestors owned this land, both when it passed to Denmark (now this territory belongs to Denmark) and when it came under the sovereignty of German rulers (the Hansens were German subjects).

The people in his area spoke strange dialects. For Emil's father, the native language was East Frisian, and for his mother, South Jutish.

Since childhood, Emil has become accustomed to heavy peasant labor, but unlike his brothers, he loved to draw. He painted the doors of barns and barns with chalk. The heroes of his early drawings were biblical characters. The family was a devout Protestant, and everyone here knew the Bible almost by heart.

Emil was not interested in working on a farm, and in 1884 he went to Flensburg, where he found work in a furniture factory. Here he spent four years, worked as a woodcarver at a furniture factory, and in free time drew.

The profession of a carver was somehow closer to art than the work of a peasant, but real art attracted him more and more. And so in 1888 he went to Munich for an exhibition industrial design, and “got hooked” in this city of museums for several weeks, again getting a job at a furniture factory.

Having soon moved to Karlsruhe, he entered the school of industrial design, where he studied not only drawing and the properties of materials, but also anatomy and the basics of painting. But Emil only had enough money for two semesters, he quit his job, and his savings were very modest.

His path now lies in Berlin, where he works as a furniture designer and studies paintings by old masters, art ancient egypt and Assyria in the magnificent Berlin museums.

In January 1892, he left for Switzerland, from St. Gallen, where, through an advertisement, he found work as a teacher of industrial and decorative drawing at the Museum of Industrial Design. The work took a lot of time and he could only draw during the holidays. Switzerland was the crossroads of all European roads. From there it was a stone's throw to Italy and France, and Emil was not slow to take advantage of this. In Milan he studied the work of Leonardo, in Vienna - Dürer. He discovered the Symbolists and Nietzsche.

Started in Switzerland professional career artist Nolde. In 1893, he created a series of humorous postcards in which he presented famous mountain peaks as funny giants. Jugend magazine reproduced two of them on its pages. And the magazine editor invited the artist to stay at his Munich house.

Encouraged by his initial success, Nolde borrowed money to produce even more postcards. And indeed, they were popular; within ten days, as many as 100 thousand postcards were sold, which brought the artist 25 thousand francs. This allowed him to quit his job and move to live in Munich. There he entered the Munich Academy, but was not accepted, and began to attend two private schools.

In the fall of 1899, Nolde went to Paris, where he studied at the Julien Academy for nine months, visited museums and exhibitions dedicated to the World Fair of 1900, and became interested in Manet and the young impressionists. He returns to Germany exhausted in search of his own artistic individuality.

“At that time I had many visions,” he writes in his memoirs, “everywhere I turned, in the sky, in the clouds, in every stone, in the branches of every tree - everywhere I saw figures who lived their own life, aroused my enthusiasm, demanding that I draw them."

Despite these feelings, Nolde painted only a few landscapes and portraits during this period. In 1900 he travels to Copenhagen, where he meets his future wife Hell. Family life The artist’s life was not cloudless; the couple were constantly plagued by financial problems, and then Ada was often sick.

Nolde’s first significant painting dates back to 1901, which he called “Before Dawn.” Here, against the backdrop of an idyllic landscape unfolding somewhere below, dating back to the German romantics of the 19th century, fantastic monsters - half-reptiles, half-birds, half-humans - soar in the air among the steep cliffs. They are born of darkness and must disappear with the dawn

In the spring of 1903, the couple settled on the remote island of Alsen, but did not live there for long, already in next year they moved to Berlin, where Ada made an ill-fated attempt to make some money as a nightclub singer. As a result, Lona became seriously ill and her husband was forced to take her to Italy to recover.

In 1905, they returned to their home on the island, but Ada continued to be ill and continued treatment in various sanatoriums, and Nolde worked a lot. He was inspired by his native northern nature. But his solitude is violated by the young artist Schmidt-Rottlief, who invites him to join the “Bridge” group.

Nolde's formal membership in this group, which in addition to Schmidt-Rottliff included Kirchner, Bleil, Hackel, Pechstein, Amier, Gallen-Capella, Müller and other outstanding artists of the time, did not last long; Nolde was an unsociable person and soon left the group, although supported friendly relations with some of its members. But his young colleagues showed big influence on his work, following the example, he became interested in graphics, an interest in which he retained throughout his life.

Nolde’s creativity became much freer, he created fantastic paintings without nature, and they were more interesting than those that he wrote according to the canons of his predecessors. Gradually he became an increasingly well-known, albeit controversial, figure in German bohemian circles.

Excited people.1913

Young Papuans.1914

He gravitated towards free nature, and since 1911 he spent the summer months in his native land, mainly in Utenwarf. In 1913, he enthusiastically agreed to take part in an expedition to Germany. New Guinea. The result of the trip was a huge corpus of sketches of racial and national types (including Russian peasants). But the main thing was that they discovered for themselves primitive art tribes inhabiting Africa and the islands of Oceania. For European art interest in the primitive has not been new since the times of Gauguin and the Cubists. But Nolde was attracted to him not by the formal side, but by simplicity and expression - the expression of the fundamental principles of existence through the form of archetypes, that is, what he himself, without being burdened by intellectual complexity, strove for in his work.

Women and Pierrot.1917

Nolde published two volumes of memoirs: the books My Own Life (1931) and Years of Struggle (1934). During the Nazi years, both of them were officially banned.

Nolde died in Seebühl on April 15, 1956, and, according to the artist’s will, his foundation museum was created there.

“Intellectual scribblers call me an expressionist; I don’t like definitions. German artist“This is who I am,” is how Nolde himself described himself.

His peasant origin largely determined his character and worldview. Cut off from his homeland, Nolde felt lonely and abandoned. Big cities They disgusted him with the inhumanity of their appearance and the ugliness of their life. Nolde wandered into taverns, cabarets, cafes, taverns, and their inhabitants, especially women, seemed to him “sickly yellow and smelled bad.” In his paintings they either wriggle in convulsive movements wild dance, or freeze in a stupor of wine dope. Their faces are grotesque masks that express their true essence, and general atmosphere social horror is conveyed here through piercing, deliberately dissonant spots of color - lemon yellow, poisonous green, blood red... In the entire huge corpus of his paintings we will not find, perhaps, a single city landscape.

Throughout his long life, Nolde felt his organic connection with the nature of the places where he grew up. In a peasant way, he perceived it not as a beautiful surroundings of human life, but as an animated creature living its own life, independent of man and indifferent to him. In the landscapes of Nolde, deserted nature blossoms unprecedentedly bright colors spring, then freezes under the cover of gray snow, then, like an unchained beast, roars with thousand-pound waves of the ocean crashing on the rocks, bleeding with the crimson of the sunset, then sparkles with yellow gold under the stream of sunlight.

None of the new artists depicted the life of flowers with such love and insight. Nolde’s works are not still lifes, but landscapes: fields of red poppies, lilac bushes, whole thickets of sunflowers, lilies, dahlias... These flowers are as organically connected to the soil as hair is to a person’s head. Nolde’s landscapes are the fruits not so much of close observation as of intuitive penetration, as if nature itself was looking at itself with loving eyes:

I really want the colors in my paintings to flow naturally through me, the artist... as if nature itself creates its paintings, just as crystals and ore self-form, how algae and mosses grow, how flowers bloom under the rays of the sun.

Having ceased to be a peasant, Nolde by no means became a city dweller. However, moving in the highly intellectual circles of European art capitals, he in no way suffered from his social inferiority complex. Rather, on the contrary: their peasant connection with the soil, with nature, with the nation, with folk culture he felt an advantage over the cosmopolitan environment of urban intellectuals, and in German art he saw the highest manifestation of the national - “Nordic” - character of his people. Foreign, especially French influences, which German artistic culture intensively absorbed at the turn of two centuries, he considered alien not only own creativity, but to the very spirit of his people.

Today, Nolde’s work is gaining a second life, as evidenced not only by numerous exhibitions, but also by commercial interest in his paintings. So recently, his portrait of an unknown woman named Nadya was sold at the Munich Ketterer Kunst auction for 2.15 million euros. The painting was put up for auction at a price of 1.8 million euros, but the result of the auction exceeded the expectations of experts. The canvas passed into the hands of a “very famous private collector” who lives in Germany.

In the late 1970s, the painting, which had belonged to the publisher Ernst Rathenau since the pre-war period, disappeared under strange circumstances. She was found again in the attic of a Berlin house at the end of 2006: she was discovered by a man whose daughter who committed suicide may have been involved in the disappearance of “Nadia”. Rathenau's heirs put the portrait up for auction.

Who the woman who served as the model for the portrait was remains a mystery. However, shortly before the auction, Ketterer Kunst was contacted by an 85-year-old lady who said that in the 1950s she had rented a room to Nadya. The woman's last name was Selten.

Religious compositions in the work of Emil Nolde, an artist harnessing the life of the spirit, have always occupied a special place.

In such films as " last supper"(1909), "Crucifixion" (1911-12), "Entombment" (1913), he is looking for ecstasy, a direct force of influence on the viewer. The heroes of his works stand close to us, next to us, the story of betrayal and torment is happening now and always. “Instinct is ten times more important than knowledge,” said Nold. His paintings are marked by the desire to move away from the objectivity of knowledge to the fullness of the mystical experience of the fate of Christ. Nolde’s Christ is the “peasant” Christ, who descended to the very bottom of the world in order to exalt it. Nolde's images, tragic, sometimes to the point of hopelessness, make us recall the great tradition of German medieval painting and, above all, Grunewald.

All of Emil Nolde’s work is imbued with a religious feeling - the expressionists were led to it by the very focus on the “innerness” of things, the desire for supersensible knowledge of the only given truth. For Emil Nolde, the energy that fills the world is manifested primarily in color, which has forever become the main thing for him. expressive means. These are the colors of nature, but not copying it, but taken from it itself, from its bowels and depths, and therefore the only authentic ones. “Nolde writes with hot colors that seem to have been broken straight out of the rough earth, taken from the depths of purple lakes, squeezed out of wolfberries,” this is how his contemporary, critic Wilhelm Gausenstein, wrote about him.

Debasement and barbaric rudeness distinguish Nolde’s paintings related to the “theme big city", common to all expressionists. But some of Nolde’s associates are more social and concrete. Nolde's world of the city is, first of all, a mysterious, phantasmagoric and low-lying Hamburg with yellow-faced Chinese sailors, with tipsy couples in a restaurant. Nolde has all this poignant, unusual, exotic - he was drawn to such a world, it was not without reason that in 1913 he made a trip to New Guinea with a stop in Russia, Japan, and China. So the name of Emil Nolde stood on a par with the names of other fugitives from the world of civilization - Rimbaud, Gauguin. But he had his own image of distant countries. His “Papuan Boys” (1913-14) do not have flexible and beautiful bodies, they are constrained, but the seriousness and despair of loneliness that comes through in their strange significant persons, are remembered forever. And nearby are the riotous entertainments of the Alexandrian sailors (“In the port of Alexandria”). Rampant paganism and harsh Christianity in Nolde are not opposed to each other. The intense experience of both, to the point of suffering, to the point of torment, is the key to their cleansing effect on the soul.

Emil Nolde did not paint portraits of his contemporaries, trying to get away from specificity. His images of people are symbolic; they are, as the artist said, “beyond understanding and knowledge” and “outside of time.” These are his “The Devil and the Scientist”, “The Nude and the Eunuch”, “Brother and Sister”. But the human soul was always at the center of his work. About her are also his numerous landscapes, which he painted throughout his life. Nature for him is a space of experience, but from the subjectivity of this sensation of the world, the artist rises to the objectivity of the life-giving power of the creative spirit of the world itself. The sky plays a huge role in his landscapes, often in a dramatic, pre-storm state, with ragged silhouettes of heavy clouds. Nature is solemn and significant. A person is not visible in it, but there are signs of his presence: houses, mills, boats, which find their place only when dissolved in the endless universe.

The nature of Nolde is colorful, but there is neither decorativeness nor a cheerful sense of the world. The intensity of his color, as always, is the key to the intensity of the life of the spirit, and it is no coincidence that great place What occupies his landscapes is light, coming as if from within the picture, emitted by spots of paint. The “wild beauty” of Nolde’s landscapes is concentrated beauty, moving from appearance to essence. Therefore, these pictures of nature, despite all their dictates from natural impressions, are never “portraits.” Even performing the same view of “Autumn Sea” (1911) twenty times, Nolde does not strive to capture its various atmospheric states, but rather tries again and again to find the resultant between the state of his own soul and the unchanging spirit of nature.

Images of nature did not leave Nolde even in later years his life. These were not only landscapes, but also still lifes with flowers, often watercolors - and the artist achieved perfection in this technique. His red poppies and purple tulips are like color in its pure form, light, free and beautiful, not burdened by the dramatic expression that weighed on the artist’s art, forcing him to sometimes destroy his works in order to free himself from them. Nolde’s light, improvised watercolors, executed on damp Japanese paper, are the brightest part of his creative heritage; but there is another stamp on it - only this area was left to him when, under fascism, Nolde was subject to a ban on creativity.

Emil Nolde was always far from politics, but his work, intense to the point of ecstasy, almost fanatical, turned out to be connected with the ideas of the “German national spirit.” His "Nordic" art led the artist to membership in the Nazi Party. But the illusion of combining genuine art with totalitarian regime failed - Nolde was branded a “degenerate”. Nolde’s creativity is higher, more significant than the “Aryan” spirit and in many ways the opposite of it. But this drama of the artist’s false hopes and claims reveals, perhaps, important aspects of the art of the 20th century, which transgresses the limits allowed to it and, in retribution for this, reaches truly tragic heights.

Information:

German Expressionism(from Lat. expressio - expression), - a direction in literature and art, the 1st quarter of the 20th century, which proclaimed the subjective world of man as the only reality, and its expression as the main goal of art. The desire for “expression”, heightened self-expression, intensity of emotions, grotesque brokenness, irrationality of images was most clearly manifested in the culture of Germany and Austria (writers G. Kaiser, W. Hasenklever, artists E. Nolde, E.L. Kirchner, F. Mark, E. Barlach and others in Germany, artists O. Kokoshko, M. Beckmann, etc., composer A. Schoenberg in Austria, German film directors F.W. Murnau, R. Wiene, etc.)

In 1905 German expressionism took shape in group "Bridge", which rebelled against the superficial verisimilitude of the Impressionists, seeking to return German art lost spiritual dimension and diversity of meanings. Mosta's program had much in common with French Fauvism. Trying to develop a simplified aesthetic vocabulary with concise, reduced to the most essential forms, the members of the "Bridge" turned to the work of Grunewald and Altdorfer, as well as to the art of the peoples of Africa.

Nolde Emil (1867–1956)

Colors have always been the main artistic medium for Nolde. They are sometimes overly intense, but do not leave the impression of deliberateness. Sometimes it seems that color radiates from the very depths of the canvas, which indicates the master’s desire to express not the external, transitory, but the essence of a phenomenon or mood, an internal state.

Real name artist Emil Nolde - Hansen. He took a pseudonym from his place of birth, a town in Northern Schleswig.

Nolde came to art relatively late. At first he mastered woodcarving at a furniture factory, and in 1884 he entered the School of Artistic Carving in Flensburg, where he studied for four years. In 1898, having moved to Munich, Nolde took lessons at art school F. Fera. Education at this prestigious educational institution was quite expensive, so to a young artist I had to draw romantic postcards depicting mysterious mountain peaks, reminiscent of fairy-tale giants from German ballads.

In the 1900s, Nolde traveled a lot. He visited Austria, Switzerland, Italy. In Paris, he attended drawing classes at the Académie Julian. In addition, he visited Copenhagen. From 1903 to 1906 Nolde lived on the island of Alsen. In general, trips to Europe contributed to the formation of the artistic style of Nolde, who felt a spiritual closeness with such old unsurpassed masters as Rembrandt, Titian, Goya, Daumier, Millet and Böcklin, and with contemporary artists- Van Gogh, Gauguin and Munch.

In 1906, Nolde visited the Dresden Expressionist association "Bridge" at the invitation of Ernst Kirchner. The artists of “The Bridge” were amazed by the landscapes of the young painter, which literally blazed with bright shades and seethed with colorful whirlwinds (“Garden at Burchard’s”, 1907, Westphalian Museum of the History of Art and Culture, Münster; “Garden of Flowers”, 1908, Art Museum, Dusseldorf).

E. Nolde. "The Last Supper", 1909, State Museum of Art, Copenhagen

Graphic works masters are also characterized by extreme expression and emotionality. This feature is characteristic mainly of black and white engravings, where the artist was not afraid to use contrasting paint masses that were sharp and rough in texture. Painting works they were also freely and widely painted with thick, pasty and seemingly smoldering colors. Watercolor works, on the contrary, were distinguished by tenderness, transparency and attention to the transitional states of the landscape. Nolde believed that an artist could transform nature with just one effort of his own creative will, and as an illustration of this idea he created the watercolor “Red Poppies” (1920, Leonard Hutton Gallery, New York). The bright petals of the flowers are translucent and seem to spread across the leaf, but this is exactly how these flowers exist in the perception and imagination of the painter.

The sky in Nolde’s canvases appears in all its solemn severity. As a rule, it lives a tense life in eternal anticipation of natural shocks - thunderstorms, thunder, manifestations of indomitable elements.

The series of paintings “Autumn Seas” (1910–1911) is full of inner drama. In depicting the violent natural power, the phantasmagoria of the universe, the artist uses thick strokes, a bold overlay of colorful layers of rich shades - green, red and white. They appear as dazzling flashes against a dark background.

Nolde dedicated many paintings to the life of the night city. Shrouded in the darkness of the night, Berlin acquires features of the grotesque and fantasy (“In the night cafe”, 1911; “At the table with wine”, 1911; “Dance among the candles”, 1912, all - Nolde Foundation, Seebüll). Further, the painter continues to develop the fantastic beginning in a series of compositions, where, as a rule, there are two characters with the appearance antique masks: “The Warrior and the Woman” (1913, Nolde Foundation, Seebüll), “The Prince and the Concubine” (1918, Nolde Foundation, Seebüll), “The Dreamer” (1919, Sprengel Museum, Hannover). In all these compositions the artist set as his task the image human passions and their confrontation in situations filled with enormous drama.

E. Nolde. "Slovenes", 1911

E. Nolde. "Sailboat in the Yellow Sea", 1914

In the 1900s–1910s, Nolde created a series of paintings on biblical themes. In 1909, “The Last Supper” (State Museum of Art, Copenhagen), “Trinity” ( State museums, Berlin) and “The Desecration of Christ” (Museum “Bridge”, Berlin).

In 1911–1912, the master commissioned the Neukirche church in Niebüll to create a polyptych consisting of nine compositions called “The Life of Christ.” Gospel images in Nolde's depiction look grotesque and paradoxical. They are rude, but at the same time they have some kind of frantic strength. Emotions overwhelm the characters, and sonorous colors correspond to the intensity of their experiences - from joy and mystical insight to suffering and pain. Here one can feel the connection with the cycle dedicated to the life of night Berlin, as well as with the master’s own mythological hierarchy.

In 1913–1914, Nolde took part in an ethnographic expedition, the purpose of which was to study the life of the people of New Guinea. The expedition route ran through Russia, Korea, Japan and China. The artist was struck by the exotic beauty of the landscapes eastern countries. Impressions from travel, unusual for a European life and the way of life of the peoples of Oceania are reflected in paintings made in the genre of landscape and still life: “Tropical Sun” (1914), “Family” (1914), “Still Life” (1915), all - Nolde Foundation , Seebull.

In 1916, the artist returned from his trip. He finally settled in the village of Utenwarf in Northern Schleswig, sometimes leaving his own house, designed by the master himself, to European countries - England, Spain, Switzerland, France, Italy.

In the 1930s, Nolde continued to develop his previous subjects: he painted northern landscapes, mythologized characters in the form of masks, and created compositions based on scenes from the Bible. As before, his painting remains bright and seething, but the compositions are more compact, and there is a closer relationship between the characters and each other. Such are the paintings “The Temptation of Joseph” (1921), “Judas with the High Priests” (1922), both from the Nolde Foundation, Seebüll.

E. Nolde. "Red Poppies", 1920, Leonard Hutton Gallery, New York

When the Nazis came to power in Germany, Nolde was one of the few artists who welcomed them and for some time became a member of the NSDAP. However, he soon realized it was destroyed. A. Hitler himself called the master a “threat to society,” and now Nolde was officially banned from painting. However, despite the ban, the artist continued to work secretly. During the years of persecution, from 1938 to 1945, he created a series of paintings called “unwritten”.

These compositions are executed mainly in watercolor technique. Nolde used porous, damp paper. On this basis, watercolor most fully manifested its expressive capabilities, and from under the master’s brush came trembling landscapes, delicate flowers beginning to bloom, sometimes sad, sometimes laughing faces of people, uncertain fairy tale characters. These works gained particular expressiveness thanks to randomly occurring colorful flows and thickenings combined with targeted brushstrokes. These are the compositions “An Unequal Pair”, “Men and Women”, “Burning Fortress”, “Sea and Red Sun” (all - Nolde Foundation, Seebüll).

When the war ended, the artist was able to work freely. Using subjects and motifs from “unwritten” paintings, he created more than a hundred wonderful colorful works. According to the master’s will, a museum called the Ada and Emil Nolde Foundation appeared in Seebülle.