Art Of The Day Weekly
#502 - from 15 February 2018 to 21 February 2018
Emil Nolde, Large Poppies, 1942, Nolde Stiftung Seebüll.
Nolde, a man of colors
DUBLIN - Emil Nolde (1867-1956) is still seen as a strange figure in the German artistic landscape in the period between the two World Wars. In spite of the fact the Nazis considered him as degenerate, he nevertheless tried to get his party membership a number of times. He stayed in Germany, where he lived isolated from others. He developed a bright and colorful world, which he splashed on his watercolors, which he called “non-painted images”. They form a choice piece that tries to repeat the success of the retrospective dedicated to another painter of the North, his friend Munch, in 2009. While the exhibition covers his whole career, it is particularly rich in works on the vibrant period of the 1910 and 1920s, with his portraits, his women, his couples, when the artist was torn between a difficult empathy for society (he lived in Berlin), and the wish to flee everything, which he finally did do by leaving to Siberia and then to the Southern seas. We are told not to hesitate to see twice an exhibition. The date will be important in this case, as all the works on paper will be replaced half way into the exhibition.
• Emil Nolde: Colour is Life at the National Gallery of Ireland, from 14 February to 10 June 2018.