Let’s celebrate the
official start of autumn with a beautiful little landscape by one of my
favorite German expressionists: Emil Nolde. German expressionist landscapes
were a big influence on my own painting when I was in school, so imagine my
delight when I uncovered this little treasure while cataloging new image
acquisitions from the awesome Albright-Knox Art
Gallery in Buffalo! Nowadays, we are
accustomed to abstraction in art. However, not even 80 years ago a lot of the
public had trouble with abstract art. I totally do not understand how such a
beautiful use of color could be considered offensive, but before World War II
(1939–1945), abstraction was under fire in some parts of Europe as well as
being shunned in America. Weird.
Expressionism in northern European art of the early
twentieth century was an offshoot of art movements in the late nineteenth
century that emphasized romanticism, expressive color, or symbolic (rather than
representational) subject matter. The objective in expressionist work was to impart
the artist’s feelings about the subject and to elicit an emotional reaction
from the viewer.
Nolde is a unique figure among the expressionists. Born in
northern Germany near the Danish border, Nolde initially studied woodcarving in
Berlin. He studied painting in Munich, and eventually in Paris from 1899–1900,
where he came under the influence of the colors of Impressionism. Armed with this bright palette,
he returned to an intrinsically German style influenced by Gothic art, featuring emotionally charged
subjects in bright color with jagged, often distorted forms. He urged other
artists to reject some aspects of western tradition in space and form, and
embrace art from non-western cultures, such as African
masks and Oceanic art.
In 1906 Nolde was invited to join the German expressionist
group Die Brücke in Berlin, a group which Vasily
Kandinsky characterized as expressing “inner necessity” in their painting.
Nolde left the group a year later, preferring to follow a personal
expressionist style. His works featuring figures reflected the influence of
non-western masks, while his use of color was an exaggeration of the
impressionist palette, and a reflection of the French Fauves’ use of non-local color on forms.
Nolde was a passionate believer in the superiority of the
German people, and had a fervent affection for the land. He joined the Nazi
party in the 1920s. However, by 1934 the Nazis considered his art too
experimental and non-German and he was forbidden to exhibit. His paintings were
part of the massive exhibition in 1937 (which included many of the
expressionists and also Bauhaus artists) put
on by the Nazis called Degenerate Art. The Nazis preferred a perverse type of social realism that extolled patriotic values of
the German people through genre scenes and allegories. During World War II,
Nolde, in self-imposed exile within Germany, produced only landscapes and
floral still life paintings
This little landscape
demonstrates Nolde’s love of his native land, expressed in the realm of pseudo
fantasy. The brilliant color and vibrant movement of the surface are
characteristic of his work throughout his life.
Activity: Ask students to create a painting about a
memory related to weather. Have them choose warm or cool colors to dominate the
painting depending on the mood they want to show.
Correlations to Davis
programs: Explorations in Art Grade 1:
4.21; Explorations in Art Grade 2: 1.4; Explorations in Art Grade 3: 2.12; Explorations
in Art Grade 4: 1.5, 4.22; Explorations in Art Grade 5: 4.20; A Personal
Journey: 5.1; A Global Pursuit: 8.1, 7.3, 6.2; Exploring Visual Design: 4, 5, 6;
The Visual Experience: 16.6; Discovering Art History: 14.1
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