Unpainted pictures

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Unpainted Pictures called Emil Nolde its small-format watercolors that were created in the period between 1938 and 1945.

background

Emil Nolde was a member of the NSDAP-Nordschleswig and advocated the goals of National Socialist politics. Nevertheless, his works aroused more and more the displeasure of the cultural politicians of the time. His pictures were also shown in the defamation exhibition “ Degenerate Art ” in 1937 . Emil Nolde was expelled from the Reich Chamber of Culture in 1941 and banned from his profession. He later presented this factually incorrectly as a painting ban. “When this painting and selling ban arrived, I was in the middle of the most beautiful, most productive painting. The brushes slipped from my hands. [...] With a sword hanging over my head, movement and freedom were taken from me ”.

In 1938 Nolde had already started painting small formats in watercolors. These pictures were "unpainted" in several ways. On the one hand because he was no longer allowed to show them in public due to his professional ban from 1941, and on the other hand because Nolde intended to later convert these sheets into large-format oil paintings, i.e., according to his plan, they had not yet been painted at all. Contrary to what he himself said, there are no indications of planned house searches to enforce the alleged ban on painting. Many of these pictures were given to friends for safekeeping. During this time, among others, his NSDAP party friend and painter Otto Andreas Schreiber supplied him with painting materials. The Hooge watercolors , which were created a few years earlier on the North Frisian Hallig Hooge , can be regarded as forerunners of these unpainted pictures . She painted Nolde in a similar situation, namely in great loneliness. Another parallel is that Nolde later executed these Hooge designs extensively in oil.

The pictures

Nolde's unpainted pictures were painted with water color, but they are not actually watercolors. They were created using mixed media. He took the water color as a basis, which he applied to absorbent Japanese paper , which he had available in large quantities. On top of that he put another layer of gouache and ink outlines .

The close, personal environment in which these pictures were created shaped his working style and the choice of his means. With a free stroke, the brush soaked in color, he applied it in different layers to the paper, thus achieving the highest color intensity. He often painted over individual areas several times, sometimes also the back of the sheet, so that his colors began to shine deeply and reached a presence of high density. In addition, he left out spots in order to let the structure of the paper stand out, set accents with partly dry pigments or cut up older paper works in order to have them newly colored in completely different shapes. Linear, graphic elements with an ink brush and pen form lines and contours. He used opaque white and tempera paint to set accents, highlight details, and thus give individual parts of the picture a special conciseness.

With the unpainted pictures , which are made up of around 1,300 works, the then seventy-year-old artist created a rich old work that is still characterized today by its extraordinary freshness and topicality. "The influences of Nolde's work, especially that of the unpainted pictures on art after 1945, continue with the same force into the artistic endeavors of the recent present."

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fulda, Bernhard in: Ruppert, W. (HG.) Artists in National Socialism, The "German Art", The Art Policy and The Berlin University; Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2015, p. 263
  2. ^ Fulda, Bernhard in: Ruppert, W. (HG.) Artists in National Socialism, The "German Art", The Art Policy and The Berlin University; Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2015, p. 270
  3. ^ Emil Nolde, Mein Leben , Cologne 2000, p. 394, ISBN 3-7701-0913-9
  4. ^ Fulda, Bernhard in: Ruppert, W. (HG.) Artists in National Socialism, The "German Art", The Art Policy and The Berlin University; Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2015, p. 276
  5. ^ Fulda, Bernhard in: Ruppert, W. (HG.) Artists in National Socialism, The "German Art", The Art Policy and The Berlin University; Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2015, p. 271
  6. ↑ Manfred Reuther in Emil Nolde-Ungemalte Bilder , Ostfildern, undated , ISBN 3-7757-0838-3