A major exhibition by pioneering German Expressionist painter Emil Nolde (1867-1956) with 120 paintings, drawings, watercolours and prints has just opened at the National Gallery of Ireland. Emil Nolde: Colour is Life is a collaboration between the National Gallery of Ireland, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the Emil Nolde Foundation in Seebüll, the artist’s former home in North Germany.
It spans Nolde’s career from his early atmospheric paintings of his homeland right through to the intensely coloured oils, to his so-called ‘unpainted pictures’ – works done on small pieces of paper during the Third Reich, when Nolde was branded a ‘degenerate’ artist and forbidden to work as a professional artist. The works on show also include Nolde’s famous flower and garden paintings, and his extraordinary religious paintings, with their mix of spirituality and eroticism.
The exhibition is grouped into themes: Idea of Home; the Metropolis; Conflict and Ecstasy; the South Seas and the Exotic; and Sea and Garden pictures. Over forty oil paintings and fifty works on paper will be shown alongside examples of Nolde’s work from the Gallery’s own collection. The co-curators are National Gallery of Ireland’s Director Sean Rainbird; and Curator of European Art 1850-1950 Janet McLean – along with Keith Hartley, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, who will curate the exhibition when it moves to Edinburgh next July. It continues in Dublin until June 10.
Emil Nolde (1867-1956)
Large Poppies (Red, Red, Red), 1942 © Nolde Stiftung Seebül
Emil Nolde (1867-1956)
Candle Dancers, 1912 © Nolde Stiftung Seebüll