Emil Nolde

📖 The Scoop

In 1941, the president of the Reichs Chamber of the Visual Arts in Berlin prohibited Emil Nolde, 'effective immediately, from all professional activities in the field of the visual arts.' 'I was in the midst of beautiful, productive painting when this ban on painting and selling arrived. The brush fell out of my hand,' Nolde recalled. 'With a sword hanging over my head, movement and freedom were taken from me'. Nolde continued to paint during the eight years of his ostracism in a remote chamber of his home in SeebÜll. He called the small-format watercolours and gouaches that were sometimes no larger than the palm of his hand 'unpainted pictures.' More than 1,300 'unpainted pictures' were produced during the time of the painting ban. 'The small works on paper ... provided me with great pleasure personally and as a painter. It regularly occurred that I stood there, and was surprised almost without knowing it about that what I had invented.' The exhibition and this accompanying catalogue contains more than 100 of the 'unpainted pictures' – most of them for the first time – as well as selected oil paintings made before and after the painting ban. Published on the occasion of the exhibition With tied hands – Unpainted Pictures by Emil Nolde at Nolde Stiftung SeebÜll, Berlin Branch, June 2009 – January 2010. English and German text.

Genre: Art / Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions / General (fancy, right?)