Nolde, Emil

born Emil Hansen (1867-1956)

   painter; one of the few prominent artists to defend National Socialism. Born to a peasant family in the Schleswig village of Nolde (which he adopted as his name in 1902), he studied woodworking in 1884-1888 before working as an itinerant cabinetmaker. After teaching for six years at the Kunstgewerbeschule in St. Gallen, he began study-ing art; his first painting was completed at the late age of twenty-nine. In 1906 he joined Dresden's Die Brücke. Although his association lasted only eighteen months, it was in this period that Nolde mastered woodcutting. His 1909 oil painting Abendmahl (Last Supper), one of several religious works produced before the war, was the first Expressionist painting purchased by a German museum. Loosely associated with several avant-garde groups, he helped found Berlin s* Neue Sezession in 1910 and took part in the second Blaue Reiter exhibition in 1912.

   Nolde s racially tinged nationalism was evident before World War I. In 1913, following a research expedition to the Orient, he concluded that Japan was "the Germany of the East. Although he rebuked an imperialism that abused tribal cultures, he did so from romantic notions of the purity of primordial man. Too old to serve in the war, he joined the leftist Arbeitsrat fur Kunst* after the Armistice,* yet in 1920 he became a charter member of North Schleswig s NSDAP.

   Nolde divided his life in the 1920s between Schleswig-Holstein and Berlin. In contrast to fellow Expressionists, who often rejected their prewar style, he resisted Berlin s allure and devoted most of his luminous color to the sea and landscape of Schleswig. His mystical attachment to Germany seemed to augur well for a future in the Third Reich. But whereas Nolde believed that Expres-sionism was compatible with National Socialism, the Nazis hated Expression-ism. Nolde naively anticipated recognition upon Hitler's* assumption of power, but soon found his work proscribed by ideologues. Despite early support from Joseph Goebbels,* his art was gradually withdrawn from museums. By 1937, when 27 of his works appeared in the exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art), 1,052 others had been removed from museums. Forbidden to work, he secretly painted small watercolors from fear that the odor of oils might com-promise him. Although he was appointed professor of art in Schleswig-Holstein in 1946, his early support of the NSDAP haunted him until his death.

   REFERENCES:Barron, "Degenerate Art"; Benz and Graml, Biographisches Lexikon; Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists; Pois, Emil Nolde.