Biography
From 1884 to 1888 he completed an apprenticeship as a carver and furniture draftsman in Flensburg. After completing his apprenticeship, he worked in various furniture workshops in Munich and Karlsruhe, and also continued his education in evening courses at the arts and crafts school. In 1889 he moved to Berlin, where he also worked in a furniture workshop. As early as 1892 he found a job as a teacher of ornamental drawing and modeling at the School of Applied Arts in St. Gallen, Switzerland. During this time he made his first watercolors of landscapes and drawings of personified mountains. Some of his early works were published in the magazine "Jugend". From this point on he worked as a freelance artist. His application for admission to the Munich Academy was rejected by Franz von Stuck. Emil Nolde then took lessons in private painting schools in Munich and Dessau in 1898.
The following year he continued his studies at the Académie Julian in Paris. Two years later he moved to Berlin and was accepted into the Berlin "Secession". In 1902 he married the actress Ada Vilstrup, and he changed his real name Emil Hansen to Emil Nolde after the name of his birthplace in Schleswig-Holstein. In the summer of the following year he stayed on the island of Alsen. The new environment prompted him to increase the brightness and intensity of his colors. In 1905 he began his graphic work with the series of etchings "Phantasien". The following year there was an exhibition at the Arnold Gallery in Dresden. He became acquainted with the artists of the group "Die Brücke", which he joined. Nolde also received stylistic inspiration from her towards expressionism. In addition to his colors, his design changed as he placed more emphasis on a greater degree of emphasis on form and simplicity. Objectivity gave way to color as a means of artistic expression.
In 1909 he moved to his hometown of Ruttebüll in Schleswig-Holstein. In the peace and seclusion, pictures with religious-Christian themes were created. In 1911, the Berlin "Secession" rejected works by Emil Nolde and other expressionists. A dispute with Max Liebermann led to Nolde's exclusion. He then joined the "New Secession". In the same year he made theatrical watercolors based on performances by Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. In 1912, the artist wanted to present his nine-part picture series "The Life of Christ" at the Brussels "Exhibition for Religious Art". But that didn't happen at all because of the church's protest. This year Nolde met the painter Alexej von Jawlensky. In 1913 and 1914 Emil Nolde took part in an expedition to New Guinea. There the artist researched the basic human condition. He translated his experiences on this research tour into numerous watercolors. In 1926 he chose to live in Seebüll, North Frisia. Five years later, in 1931, he was admitted to the Prussian Academy of Arts, and his autobiography "Your Own Life" was published.
In 1934, Nolde became a member of the National Socialist Working Group of North Schleswig (NSAN), which was "aligned" with the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) a year later. Even though Nolde was a member of the NSDAP, the National Socialists classified his art as "degenerate" in 1937. After the "Degenerate Art" exhibition in Munich in the same year, a total of 1,052 works by Nolde were removed from public museums. Four years later he was banned from painting. The artist hid his pictures to protect them from access by the Nazi regime. He described the small-format watercolors he created during this time despite the ban on painting as "unpainted pictures". After his wife died in 1946, he married Jolanthe Erdmann two years later. In 1952 he was admitted to the peace class of the Order "Pour de Mérite". Emil Nolde's early work was influenced by the Impressionist movement, particularly by the works of Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch.
Then the artists' association "Die Brücke" led him to expressionist forms of expression. Emil Nolde came into contact with the art of primitive peoples, which aroused his interest. He took advantage of the originality and intense expressiveness of it. Nolde's Christian-religious themed paintings are striking because of their disharmonious colors, which therefore have a visionary, tendentiously surrealistic character.
Emil Nolde died on April 13, 1956 in Seebüll.
