Emil Nolde (1867–1956) was a celebrated German painter and printmaker, and one of the main representatives of Expressionism. Unpainted Pictures is the summer exhibition at The Nordic Watercolour Museum, comprising a unique collection of watercolours that Nolde painted in secret at his remote house in Seebüll near the German-Danish border in the 1940s.

Nolde’s work was very popular in Germany in the 1920s. However, when the Nazis came to power in 1933 all modern art was banned, and all works in German museums and public collections were confiscated. At the large anti-exhibition held in Munich in 1937 entitled “Entartete Kunst” (“Degenerate Art”), Nolde was the most represented artist, with 32 works. In 1941 he was forbidden from painting and exhibiting. From then on he withdrew and lived in isolation in his house in the country. He continued to work there, nevertheless, painting over 1,300 small watercolours and gouaches. The series has never been split up and belongs in its entirety to the Nolde Museum in Seebüll, which has loaned the works for this exhibition.

The selection of paintings shown at The Nordic Watercolour Museum reflects all the main motifs of Nolde’s work. His art centred on the landscape and people. Flowers and gardens are a theme that runs unbroken through his creative work. The vibrant colours of his work are unmatched. Brought up in a strictly religious environment, he wanted to express the essence of things by using colour, rather than imitating nature. Flowers were thus to him a symbol of the eternal cycle of birth, life and death. Besides these motifs, Nolde was also known for his unconventional visual interpretations of biblical tales, although these did not take the form of watercolours. His work is distinguished throughout by an intense visionary pathos and a palette of colour rich in symbolic and sensual undertones.

Nolde’s art encapsulated the moral conflicts with which German modernists were confronted. His upbringing gave him nationalist conservative values, but his artistic idiom was experimental and innovative. Nolde’s watercolour technique was outstanding. It was apt and intuitive at the same time. Using pigment and plenty of water he conveys both irrepressible energy and a deep tenderness. The modest format glows with intense colours and wispy, transparent layers. As he relates in his memoirs, he worked without models or even well-defined ideas. His paintings instead took shape immediately beneath the brush.

The exhibition at The Nordic Watercolour Museum is the first comprehensive presentation of Nolde’s art in Sweden since the 1970s.

Emil Nolde

Pictures from the exhibition