Emil Nolde

_{Nolde 1867 - 1956 Seebüll}

Emil Nolde was born as Emil Hansen in Nolde, a village in the German-Danish border area, in 1867. He completed an apprenticeship as a wood sculptor and subsequently attended the School of Arts and Crafts in Karlsruhe until 1891. In 1896, after an employment as a drawing teacher at the Museum for Industry and Trade in St. Gallen, he chose to become a freelance painter.
From 1896 to 1900, he studied at the private Friedrich-Fehr-School in Munich, and travelled to Vienna, Milan and Paris, studying works by Titian, Rembrandt, Böcklin, Leibl and Marées. In 1906, he became a member of the artist’s group “The Bridge” for a short time; in 1908 he became a member of the Berlin Secession which excluded Nolde in 1910 because of a scandal. Subsequently, Nolde and others founded the “New Secession”. In 1912, he participated in the exhibitions of the “Blue Rider” and in the period that followed, numerous exhibitions, for example in Berlin, Jena, Hamburg and Munich displayed the works of the solitary artist. In 1913/14, Nolde participated in an expedition to the South Pacific together with his wife.
To celebrate his 60th birthday, a large retrospective exhibition took place in Dresden. The Nazi-regime put him in the centre of their exhibition about “degenerated art” and forbade him to work, which he mostly ignored. Nolde labeled the watercolour works, that were executed in this time, as “unpainted images”. After 1945, he received numerous honours for his works. Emil Nolde died in Seebüll, North Frisia, in 1956.