Artist of the week: Emil Nolde
lines, paint, deaf and flowering,
their boundless grandeur - this is my being,
my beautiful, my tragic world.
Emil Nolde
Hans Emil Hansen (Hans Emil Hansen - this is the real artist's name) was born on August 7, 1867 in the family of a German farmer in a small village called Nolde, that on the border with Denmark.
known that in five children in the family but Emil had a flair for creativity and tried to bring them to life by decorating family life (legend has it that a teenager, he painted the walls of their homes and even commercial built next to it, but painting is not preserved).
 Emil Nolde Self-Portrait. 1917 Oil on canvas. 83 x 65 Nolde Stiftung (Foundation Nolde) Zeebyul Source: art-magazin.de |
In 1884, the 17-year-old Emil leaving the parental home in the city of Flensburg, where the student is arranged on the local furniture factory. First of all he is interested in wood carving and construction of furniture. 4 years later, Emil Hansen comes to art-craft school in Karlsruhe and in parallel at the local furniture industry develops profession cabinetry. Furniture turned out he had a good idea, in 1890, he worked in Berlin, Munich and other major cities in Germany. However, the farther away, the more he is interested in art, and this interest is unlikely to be explained only by the needs of crafts.
numerous trips to Germany allowed him to visit many museums and explore the monuments masterpieces of world culture and art. In museums, it truly is fascinating aesthetics of ancient Egyptian and Assyrian art, about the same period, he is interested in creativity F. Hodler (Ferdinand Hodler) and A. Böcklin (Arnold Böcklin ) . He sketched a lot, trying to keep in mind, and later in the halls of museums gleaned ideas are often used in the decoration of their new furniture.
Since 1892, Emil Hansen ornamentalistiku teaches at the school of applied arts in St. Gallen, and is attempting to create their own works of art, filled with allegories and symbols, trying to imitate the style of Böcklin.
 EMIL HANSEN (Nolde) A postcard from the series" Magic Mountain » Chromolithography. 9 x14 Nolde Stiftung (Foundation Nolde) Zeebyul Source: flickr.com |  EMIL HANSEN (Nolde) Postcard number 28 in the series "Magic Mountain» Chromolithography. 9 x14 Nolde Stiftung (Foundation Nolde) Zeebyul Source: flickr.com |
In 1894, Hansen made a series of postcards with views of the Swiss mountains, in the outlines of which are thinly veiled faces and grotesque masks. Simple and even somewhat naive, cards like these people and disperse huge numbers. That the sale proceeds allowed to Emil in 1898 for the first time in my life to do a professional art education, his teaching can not be called a systematic, but he worked hard and pretty intense, and the range of his interests was very extensive.
At first, he went to Munich and picks up the initial private art lessons, then to Dachau engaged in painting in the artist Adolf Heltselya (Adolf Richard Hölzel), then 9 months in Paris attending the Academy Julian, going to museums and stares intently at the Impressionist paintings. In the summer of 1900, he returned to Germany and works in Berlin and Copenhagen, Danish, and in the following year to arrange a permanent studio on the island of Alzen and wrote his first large painting with symbolic title "Before the Dawn", favorably received by the critics.
| Emil Nolde A summer evening. 1903 Oil on canvas. 72,5 x 87,5 Christie's. 11.10.1995. Lot 141 Estimate: 300 000-400 000 pounds Result: 309,500 pounds Source: bridgemanart.com |
In 1902, he married Danish actress Ada Vilstrup. A young couple decides to move to Berlin. And at that point, we can talk about the early history of the painter Emil Nolde (Emil Nolde). In general, the alias "Nolde," the title of his homeland, he took in 1901 or 1902, when I realized that creativity can become his profession, and he - a celebrated artist. He thought that with a name like that it will stand out even more because « Hansen too much ».
Since moving to Berlin in the work of Nolde there is a new topic - the night life of the city with which it does not touch before, but began to learn thanks to his wife, the actress and her many friends from Berlin bohemia.
In Berlin he met the collector Gustav Shiflerom - he one of the first to appreciate the creativity of the artist and supported him throughout the years.
 Emil Nolde Portrait of Gustav Shiflera. 1915 oil on canvas Nolde Stiftung (Foundation Nolde) Zeebyul Source: allpainters.ru |
In his early works, Emil Nolde is clearly fascinated by the bright, colorful and changeable nature, free form which is trying to convey in numerous natural landscapes. His early work emotionally, even lyrically. In his paintings can be found mixing all that interested and excited the author at the moment in art: it is known that he was fond of French impressionists and modernists, medieval and Renaissance German art, admired the works of Van Gogh, Gauguin and Munch.
In their quest of color and composition, he was very close to the aesthetics of the creative association "Bridge." Founded in 1905 by architecture students in Dresden Technical School Bleylem Fritz (Fritz Bleyl), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (Ernst Ludwig Kirchner), Erich Heckel (Erich Heckel) and Karl Schmidt-Rotluffom (Karl Schmidt-Rottluff), it was aimed at "through art build a bridge "from the world of real things in the world of spiritual beings in the manifesto (1906) declared the" From us all, who spontaneously and without distortion conveys what inspires their work. " By all accounts, the union of "The Bridge" has given rise to a style of German expressionism art. Its members have combined trends of the German art - lyrical depiction of nature, art nouveau - with the discoveries and theories of the French Impressionists, so the German expressionism was created as a response to the romance and smoothness (refinement) of French Impressionism. This is indicated by the names of styles: expressio - the expression (emotions) and impression - an impression.
Generally, the authorship of the term " Expressionism "some sources tend to attribute to Paul Cassirer (Paul Cassirer), the Berlin publisher and gallery owner having a lot of weight on the art market (for example, he was in the jury of the Berlin Secession). Legend has it that in 1910, standing in front of one of the works Pechstein (Max Pechstein), the question of whether we are still dealing with Impressionism, Cassirer allegedly replied that it was more a question of expressionism. This statement marked the beginning of the term spread in an artistic environment, and then on the pages of magazines and books.
In 1906 Nolde, becoming a member of associations involved in all of its exhibitions, participates in develop a theoretical framework and the manifesto, but one and a half years later, he comes out of his members. It is known, however, that he remained in close contact with members of the "Bridge" and in 1910, together with them even joined the New Berlin Secession.
 Emil Nolde . Flower Garden. Pansies. 1908 Oil on canvas. 73,5 x 89,5 Sotheby's. 07.02.2006. Lot 8 Estimate: 1 000 000-1 500 000 GBP Result: 1,912,000 pounds Source: mutualart.com |  Emil Nolde . Sunset. 1909 Oil on canvas. 73 x 88,2 Christie's. 20.06.2006. Lot 21 Estimate: 1 000 000-1 500 000 GBP Result: 1,912,000 pounds Source: christies.com |
Prior to 1909 Nolde - singer and expression of pure color. In a unique free manner, he wrote numerous portraits, landscapes, gardens. His goal in this period, he sees the "add new colors in nature, projecting it's emotional and spiritual life».
intense concentration on color, wide, pasty strokes that it distributes color spot on the surface of the canvas, point to an unrelenting passion Nolde Van Gogh, but over time the value of the line and the composition is reduced to a minimum, the color begins to completely dominate the work and takes the artist and the viewer from the specifics of the plot in the world of non-figurative painting: «Yellow can write happiness and pain. There is a color of fiery red, blood red, the color is just a red rose <...>. Any paint embodies the soul and makes my soul happy or excited defeated ».
 Emil Nolde The Last Supper. 1909 Oil on canvas. 86 x 107 Statens Museum for Kunst (National Museum of Art). Copenhagen, Denmark Source: wikipaintings . org |
In 1909, the work of Nolde arises religious theme (researchers link this change with his cure from a serious illness). Busy religious works, Nolde moving away from active public life and after 1913 are reluctant to take part in public events and trade shows, more and more confined to the walls of your home. However, this does not prevent a temporary retreat art Nolde winning new fans: in the 1910-1912 years of his paintings have great success at exhibitions in Hamburg, Essen and Hagen.
 Emil Nolde Dancer Japanese watercolor on paper. 47,5 x 35,1 Christie's. 20.06.2006. Lot 2 Estimate: 100 000-150 000 pounds Result: 209,600 pounds Source: christies.com |  Emil Nolde Still life with masks III. 1911 Oil on canvas. 74 x 78 Nelson Gallery of Art, Atkins-Museum. Kansas City Source: artchive.com |
In 1911-1912, in the wake of interest to fauvism Nolde interested in primitive art , in 1913-1914 involved in the medical and demographic expedition to New Guinea, the route which passed through Moscow and Siberia, Japan, Korea and China, and the way back - in Indo-China and the Indian Ocean. The result of this long journey was a lot of sketches and oil paintings, watercolors, and a series of prints with images of ethnic types and kinds of countries where he had visited.
His pictorial language is extremely flattened, he says with the audience not forms and volumes, but the color and emotion. Paints his works are flaming. Master of color, it has set itself an interesting coloristic problem and solves them almost pure pigment - red, yellow and blue, he writes his flowers and landscapes, and multi-figure compositions, almost without using complementary colors.
| Emil Nolde autumn sea VII. 1910 Oil on canvas. 60 x 70 Nolde Stiftung (Foundation Nolde) Zeebyul Source: artchive.com |
Between World War I Nolde - a successful artist. He creates landscapes, still lifes, still a lot of work with religious themes, the most popular are his series "Autumn Sea" (20 papers) and "The Life of Christ" in nine parts.
His Society recognizes and graciously accept criticism. He becomes a member of the artistic union in Berlin, active interest in politics. In 1918, he, along with representatives of the revolutionary wing of the German avant-garde becomes formed immediately after the overthrow of the monarchy "November Group", whose aim was "the union between artists, mostly expressionists, and the new, basically is a socialist, a German state."
« stuffer intellectuals call me expressionist, I do not like definitions. The German artist - that's who I am », - writes Nolde. By the end of the First World War, he has already crossed the half-century mark and, together with the whole country is going through a humiliating position, which was after the defeat of Germany. In addition, the post-war changes in the boundaries of the country concerned and in person: in 1920 the village of Nolde, in which he was born, walked Denmark (or rather, returned to its line-up after half a century of accessories Germany), and unexpectedly turns out to be an artist overnight Danish citizen. For a man with a German born self-aware, this situation is unacceptable. Perhaps that is why in the early 1920s, he enthusiastically supports the National Socialist Party.
