Art from Emil Nolde

     Emil Nolde was a German painter,printmaker and  is the first expressionists as well as the member of Die Brucke. He is considered to be one of the greatest oil painter and water color painter of the 20th century. He was born in North Germany, near the village of Nolde and his real name was Emil Hansen.He studied in the School of Aplied Arts in Karlsruhe and also spent 3 years taking private painting class after he got rejected from Munich Academy of Fine Arts.He started his career in painting when he was at the age of 35. In 1902,he married to a Danish actress Ada Vistrup, moved to Berlin and changed his last name after his birthplace. He created almost 200 etchings followed by bursts, woodcuts, lithographs and prints. He was expelled from the Akademie der Kunste where he used to work and in 1941 the Nazi forbid him to paint. 1052 of his works were removed from museums and 20 of his works were included in the Degenerate art exhibition. After 1941, he left Berlin and he died in Seebull. In 1944, his Allied raided and destroyed his Berlin studio filled with many valuable works of art. Emil Nolde had received German Order of Merit, West Germany's highest civilization decoration. His famous works were Protrait of young women and child, Prophet and many more.

Alice, 1907
    In this painting Gouache over lithograph technique is used and bright colors like pink, red, orange, light green are used as well as black and light brown.In this painting, a woman is facing towards the wall and showing her back towards the public. The color of her clothes and the wall is bright and feminine which portrays a happy mood. But she has hidden her face towards the wall and is facing downwards with a sad face. Also the color of her face and the black shadow around her face indicates that she is not happy and trying to hide her sad face from others. I think this painting relates the women's situation at that period where they had to show their happiness towards the public and were forced to hide their sadness and oppressed life. From this painting, I can say that the woman feels nothing towards the bright side of the public in front of her sadness which relates to nihilism.








Prophet, 1912



      In this picture, it shows a God figure and from his expression he seems very sad. His eyes shows that he is in deep surrow and looks like he is in lot of pain. His face is all wrinkled, he has a long beard and he looks very tired too. From this, I think that it indicates the devastating result of the World War. The color used is black and white that creates a tragic and dull environment. It is made by woodcut. This can be related to nihilism as it shows the destructiveness that humans were capable of.

Familie, 1917

     In this picture, it shows a family man, his wife and a kid. Both man and woman are naked,very thin and it looks like they are in the jungle which indicates that they have not ate for several days and do not have house and clothes also. As I looked in their face, the man face looks like he is in shock or threatened by something, woman looks very weak and depressed and the kid is trying to hide and is frightened too. As a whole, this picture reflects how the World War had made impact on people's life or it also reflects the poor people's life. The picture is woodcut. Black and white color are used in this picture. I can relate this picture to nihilism as it shows worthless existence.

References:

www.germanexpressionism.com

Wikipedia. Wikipedia, n.d. Web. 23 Sept. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism>.