The important Expressionist Emil Nolde (1867–1956) spent decades intensively exploring the motif of the “sea” with a degree of exclusiveness which reveals that he must have seen its primordial power and constant dynamism as mirroring the artistic drive.
This is the first museum exhibition to be devoted to the major theme of Nolde’s seascapes. An exceptional selection of over 70 paintings and watercolours has been gathered for this purpose. Most of the loans were selected in nearby Seebüll, the “Place for Nolde” in Schleswig-Holstein, in tune with the works found in the Kunst der Westküste Collection. The artist’s studio and garden can still be visited in Seebüll today.
Atmospheric images conveying emotional states are joined with paintings of seas overflowing with colour and testifying to Nolde’s enthusiasm for the richly varied interplay of air and water, wind and waves. At the same time, they reflect this artist from northern Schleswig’s love for the land between the North Sea and Baltic Sea. Particularly in his watercolours, Nolde achieves positively ecstatic chromatic compositions in which the elements seem to merge into one another without any boundaries. This is surely the most striking demonstration of Nolde’s extraordinary talent in handling colour.
The exhibition at Museum Kunst der Westküste was developed in cooperation with the Nolde Stiftung Seebüll and will be presented exclusively on Föhr. A catalogue will be published.
