Emil Nolde: The Colors of a Controversial Artist

The Making of an Artist

The artist, born Hans Emil Hansen on August 7, 1867, in the village of Nolde, Denmark, grew up on a farm with his three brothers. His family were peasants and devout Protestants. From a young age, Emil realized that farm life wasn’t for him—he had a deep passion for art. Though he painted and drew frequently, it wasn’t until the age of 31 that he was able to fully pursue a career as an artist. From 1884 to 1891, Emil Nolde studied woodcarving and illustration in Flensburg and traveled between Munich, Karlsruhe, and Berlin. In 1889, he was accepted into the School of Applied Arts in Karlsruhe, where he attended night classes.

Between 1892 and 1898, Nolde worked as a drawing instructor at the School of the Museum of Industrial and Applied Arts in St. Gallen, Switzerland. However, he eventually left the position to focus solely on becoming a professional artist. In 1898, he applied to the Munich Academy of Fine Arts but was rejected, yet this setback did not discourage him.

Over the next three years, Nolde took private painting lessons and visited Paris, where he was exposed to the Impressionist art scene. He also encountered the works of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, who greatly influenced his artistic development. In 1899, Nolde was accepted into the Académie Julian in Paris. He managed to finance his studies by selling some of his early works, which depicted the Swiss Alps as grotesque characters. These unique images were transformed into postcards, which sold widely.

Getting into the Art World

In 1902, Emil Nolde married Danish actress Ada Vilstrup, changed his last name to Nolde, and moved to Berlin. There, he met influential figures like art collector Gustav Schiefler and artist Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Four years later, in 1906, Nolde was invited to join Die Brücke (The Bridge), a group of young Expressionist artists in Dresden. The group admired his vibrant use of color, and Nolde shared his innovative etching techniques with them. Artists such as Otto Mueller, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Max Pechstein greatly benefited from his mentorship. Due to age and temperament differences, Nolde left the group after a year, although he continued to have friendly relations with its members.

In 1908, Nolde joined the Berlin Secession, but a few years later, he clashed with the group’s leader, Max Liebermann, who rejected Expressionism. Nolde, in turn, criticized Liebermann, which led to his expulsion from the group. Despite this, Nolde continued to find opportunities, participating in the launch of the Neue Secession in Berlin that same year. By 1912, Nolde was already gaining significant recognition. He exhibited alongside Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) artists in Munich (including Wassily Kandinsky) further solidifying his reputation.

While in Berlin, Nolde drew inspiration from the collections at the Völkerkundemuseum (Ethnological Museum). This influence led him to create over 120 drawings based on exhibits from the Global South. Among these works are Man, Woman, and Cat, which depicted King Njoya’s throne, the Mandu Yenu, brought from Cameroon to Germany under controversial circumstances. In 1913–1914, for unclear reasons, Nolde and his wife were invited to join a German colonial expedition to New Guinea via Russia. This journey became a rich source of inspiration, resulting in several paintings, watercolors, and prints based on their travels.

The Religious Paintings

Emil Nolde also explored religious themes in his art, alongside his well-known landscapes, floral works, and portraits. Although these religious pieces make up only a small portion of his overall output, they play a significant role in his artistic career. As a child, Nolde was deeply influenced by Judeo-Christian stories, having read the entire Bible. However, in his early religious works (1900–1904), he struggled to develop his unique style, remaining under a heavy influence from his role models, Jean-François Millet and Honoré Daumier. It wasn’t until 1906 that Nolde began to infuse his religious paintings with emotion, using bright colors and simplified, two-dimensional forms to convey his themes.

A few years later, Nolde had a near-death experience from drinking poisoned water. This gave him a new sense of urgency in his work. His religious pieces, now including etchings, took on a darker, more violent tone. The ominous mood in these works even unsettled his wife, Ada, who admitted the etchings made her nervous.

Religious subjects had long been a central theme in Northern European art, but Nolde brought innovation to this tradition with his use of vivid, symbolic colors. This bold coloring was also visible in his watercolors, which were characterized by intensity uncommon in the medium at the time.

The colors in his religious paintings were not used to achieve realism. Instead, Nolde tried to evoke a nostalgic, dreamlike atmosphere in imaginary settings. Through these works, he expressed his growing disillusionment with the materialistic world, which left him deeply mistrustful—not only of humanity but of his own religious beliefs as well.

Emil Nolde’s Cooperation with the Nazis

Emil Nolde had a complex personality, marked by many dark aspects. One of the most troubling was his cooperation with the Nazi regime. He joined the National Socialist German Workers’ Party in its Danish section in the early 1920s. Nolde frequently expressed antisemitic views and criticized Jewish artists. He believed Expressionism represented a distinctive German style, an opinion he shared with other party members like Joseph Goebbels and Fritz Hippler.

Despite this alignment, Hitler condemned all forms of modern art, including Expressionism. As a result, Nolde faced condemnation as well. The Nazis removed 1,052 pieces of his work from museums and galleries, more than they did for any other artist. They looted many of his pieces for the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition in 1937. Nolde protested against this treatment and even appealed to Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach in Vienna.

In 1941, the Nazi regime prohibited Nolde from painting, even in private. He could not buy canvases, sell, or exhibit his work. However, he defied these restrictions. He secretly painted hundreds of floral designs using watercolors to avoid detection by neighbors or officials. His refusal to obey the rules became an act of civil disobedience. Despite this, Nolde remained sympathetic to the party until the end of World War II. In 1944, bombings destroyed his studio in Berlin, along with his entire archive of prints.

Dealing with the Complicated Past

Postwar art historians often overlooked Nolde’s complicated past. It was the recent studies that acknowledged his commitment to Nazism and shed new light on the connection between his political views and his art. In 2019, the Berlin National Library held an exhibition titled Emil Nolde: A German Legend, The Artist during the Nazi Regime. This show examined Nolde’s self-proclaimed Nazi sympathies and how they were forgotten by the postwar art world. Furthermore, historian Bernhard Fulda, working with the Nolde Museum, showed that the artist collaborated with curators, publishers, and journalists to conceal his Nazi sympathies and separate them from his artistic work.

Given the information about Emil Nolde’s past, his involvement with the Nazis seems less surprising. Throughout much of his career, he painted Teutonic themes, had a severe dispute with Jewish artist Max Liebermann, and studied racial characteristics of the native communities during one of his travels to German New Guinea. Art critic Adolf Behne even labeled him a “degenerate ‘degenerate.’”

Colors, Flowers, Landscapes

Leaving his life choices aside, Emil Nolde remained a brilliant colorist. His brushwork consistently expressed emotion, and his color palette carefully thought out. He used vibrant yellows and reds to illuminate darker tones in his work. His watercolors captured dark and menacing stormy scenes alongside brilliant flowers. This heavy interest in flowers, the vibrancy of colors, and the bold lines all reflected the influence of Vincent van Gogh on his art.

Additionally, Nolde preferred quiet, even lonely, places to live. In 1927, he designed and built his house in Seebüll, Germany. He surrounded it with a large garden filled with self-made ceramics and textiles. There, he led a solitary life, painting atmospheric scenes, beautiful flowers, and portraits.

The Postwar Era