EMIL NOLDE | Bärtiger Mann und Frau (Bearded Man and Woman)

Artes Kunsthaus, Rheda-Wiedenbrück
Private Collection, Germany (acquired from the above in 1986)
Thence by descent to the present owner

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down. The sheet is affixed to the mount at all four corners and is floating in the mount. The right and left edges are slightly uneven. There are some flattened creases in places. There is some minor craquelure visible to the thicker areas of pigment which appears stable. This work is in good overall condition.
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Executed circa 1931-35, Emil Nolde’s Bärtiger Mann und Frau embodies the artist’s fascination with the emotive and evocative power of colour. It was his use of ‘tempestuous colours’ that inspired an invitation from the German Expressionist group Die Brücke to join their ranks in 1906 (cf. Dietmar Elger, Expressionism: A Revolution in German Art, Cologne, 2002, p. 105). While Nolde was only briefly a member, the present work encapsulates the essence of the group’s sceptical attitude towards objective reality and their embrace of an emotional approach to understanding and depicting life though colour.

Nolde is considered a pioneer of Expressionism, as Bernard Myers notes: ‘no other painter expressed so forcefully as [him] the underlying emotive and intuitive character of Expressionism…’ (Bernard S. Myers, Expressionism: A Generation in Revolt, London 1963, p. 128). Nolde’s artistic principles were largely shaped by an interest in so-called ‘primitive art’ and a strong interest in anti-natural forms. Nolde himself stated: ‘The more an artist can move away from nature and yet remain natural, the greater his art’ (quoted in Myers, ibid, p. 130). He sought inspiration from the Berlin Ethnographical Museum where he studied masks and statues from Egypt, Africa and Southeast Asia and in 1911 was preparing to write Artistic Expression Among Primitive Tribes. Following the example of artists he admired, such as Gauguin, he travelled to the South Seas in 1913. The present work illustrates these influences through its elegantly linear quality, simplified facial features and vivid palette.

Watercolours hold a particular importance within Nolde’s œuvre. While he rarely made any preparatory drawings or sketches, the medium’s fluidity grants the figures in these works a unique sense of liberation and spontaneity in their execution. Myers notes that ‘the watercolours, the final measure of [Nolde’s] directness and spontaneity, are among the best in Modern art. [Nolde] always felt the painter should paint first and think afterward’ (quoted in ibid, p. 128).