Lot Essay
On the 13 May 1933 the President of the Prussian Academy of Arts called on ten members, all elected as recently as 1931, to tender their voluntary resignation. Emil Nolde was asked but refused, and from this time on suffered censorship and persecution from the National Socialist Party. During this time of the worst persecutions, when he was actually forbidden to paint, he preserved his inner freedom by secretly executing hundreds of watercolours in his studio in Seebll. These he called his Ungemälte Bilder in which he used the technique of "wet on wet" as in his earlier watercolours, allowing wet paint to flow over wet paper creating spontaneous evocative images in fluid, transparent colours. Most of these works resemble illustrations to some invented story-line, spawned as they were from the artist's fertile imagination. Almost all are figurative.
Das Liebespaar is a particularly large work from Nolde's Ungemälte Bilder period. The majority of works from this date were only about eight by six inches intended as they were as studies for oil paintings. Peter Selz writes, "By this time Nolde had learned more about human relationships, and in this great cycle he gave a passionate visual form to his wisdom. There are figures that appeal, reject, wail, smile and contemplate ... This world is peopled with beautiful and desirable young women, blindly groping old men, grimacing gnomes and compassionate demons ... The imagination often here recalls the dramatis personae of The Tempest, Peer Gynt, or Munch's anxious fantasies, although it is much less perturbed than that of Munch. Indeed, Nolde's private world has been transfigured into a serene realm of human actors whose chief function is their subservience to the colour which gave them birth." (P. Selz, Emil Nolde, New York, 1963, p. 72-3.)
A favourite theme of Nolde's Phantasien is the relationship between men and women. Here in Das Liebespaar the overlaying of the faces and the blend of colours creates an extremely mystical composition. Through this composition we can see how he developed the medium of watercolour, making the most of its evocative qualities, creating unique images with an admiral informality and spontaneity.
Sold with a photocertificate from Professor Dr. Martin Urban stating "Das Aquarell gehört zur Gruppe der Phantasien die 1931-1934/35 entstanden sind" dated Nolde Stiftung, Seebll 7.10.1993
Das Liebespaar is a particularly large work from Nolde's Ungemälte Bilder period. The majority of works from this date were only about eight by six inches intended as they were as studies for oil paintings. Peter Selz writes, "By this time Nolde had learned more about human relationships, and in this great cycle he gave a passionate visual form to his wisdom. There are figures that appeal, reject, wail, smile and contemplate ... This world is peopled with beautiful and desirable young women, blindly groping old men, grimacing gnomes and compassionate demons ... The imagination often here recalls the dramatis personae of The Tempest, Peer Gynt, or Munch's anxious fantasies, although it is much less perturbed than that of Munch. Indeed, Nolde's private world has been transfigured into a serene realm of human actors whose chief function is their subservience to the colour which gave them birth." (P. Selz, Emil Nolde, New York, 1963, p. 72-3.)
A favourite theme of Nolde's Phantasien is the relationship between men and women. Here in Das Liebespaar the overlaying of the faces and the blend of colours creates an extremely mystical composition. Through this composition we can see how he developed the medium of watercolour, making the most of its evocative qualities, creating unique images with an admiral informality and spontaneity.
Sold with a photocertificate from Professor Dr. Martin Urban stating "Das Aquarell gehört zur Gruppe der Phantasien die 1931-1934/35 entstanden sind" dated Nolde Stiftung, Seebll 7.10.1993