Figur und Vogel

Like other European avant-garde groups at the turn of the 20th century, Expressionist artists, including Emil Nolde, found inspiration in the ethnographic objects of African and Pacific cultures. Nolde was able to experience such objects first-hand through visits to Berlin’s Völkerkunde-Museum, the city’s ethnographic museum. Here, Nolde created a series of sketches of the exhibits which most fascinated him, some of which were developed into fully worked oil paintings, as was the case for the objects in the present work. Nolde’s admiration of these objects was primarily aesthetic – he was particularly drawn to what he perceived as their inherent artistic authenticity. Within Expressionism, an instinctive approach to artistic practice was highly prized. A quick line and less attention to naturalistic rendering, resulted in a composition that had less time to be laboured or overthought, and rather, was admired as a genuine expression of the artist.

Nolde would eventually experience some of these cultures personally, when he joined a scientific expedition to German New Guinea and other parts of the South Pacific in 1913. His writings reveal the profound impact these travels and encounters left on him, as he writes admiringly of landscapes, people, and visual encounters, previously unknown to him. He also lamented the impact of Western Colonialism on indigenous culture, describing the negative effect on native populations and communities, and aiding in their way of life. These cultures, with which he felt an affinity, and their respective visual cultures played an important role in Nolde’s Expressionist development, helping him find new ways to evoke a sense of emotion and spirituality within his artistic oeuvre.