Emil Nolde began his independent creative work only when he was 37. But blessed with with unusual productivity and a long life, he could still leave an exceptionally large oeuvre. Until 1909 he followed the German Impressionists and constantly heightened the expressive valeur of his colours. Inspired by Munch or the 'Brucke', Nolde painted a number of scenes from life in Berlin's variety shows, wine restaurants and cafes. A bright palette reprodices the artificial light. After his visit to James Ensor in Ostende, masked figures began to appear alongside his usual exotic figures and fabrics, and impart a dark fascination to his still-life paintings.
His craving for originality and a deep faith in Christ's redeeming sacrifice later led to his religious paintings. He deliberately painted primitive figures of rustic heaviness and with drastic, passionate gestures. Pain and suffering, insult and mockery are expressed with utterly intense colours. In his quest of original man, Nolde in 1913-14 took part in an expedition to New Guinea via Russia and China.
It is, however, his native Schleswig-Holstein with its coast and high clouds over the wide horizon, its marshes and paddocks, its low cottages with their luxuriant gardens, which all his life were Nolde's perennial theme. Clouds and waves, houses and flowers are full of an inner dramatic movement, and a glowing or somber splendour of colors rises out of a dark melancholy. With macabre humour Nolde also sometimes depicts the nocturnal doings of the trolls and imps of his native land, but religious themes always remain at the center of his creative work.
Emil Nolde bequeathed no less than 120 of his paintings and a vast collection of graphic art to Seebull near Kiel (Schleswig-Holstein), the community where he had lived for so long.
Source: European paintings in German art galleries
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