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Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
EMIL NOLDE Prophet.
Woodcut on cream wove paper, 1912. 315x225 mm; 12 1/2x8 3/4 inches, full margins. Edition of approximately only 20-30. Signed in pencil, lower right. A superb, dark, and richly-inked impression of this scarce woodcut.
Nolde (1867-1956) was born Emil Hansen to a farming family near the village Nolde (which he took on as a pseudonym in the early 1900s) in southern Denmark, then part of the German Empire. He departed from his rural roots to pursue his interest in the arts, first with a career as a woodcarver, which undoubtedly fed into his adept use of the woodcut medium later on. Nolde eventually devoted himself to his studio practice full time at the age of 31. He became involved as a mentor in the expressionist circle Die Brücke at the request of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff in 1906. Members of Die Brücke were known for their use of expressive color and impasto in their paintings as well as their use of woodcuts to promote their forward-thinking goals. Nolde, however, left the group after only a year due to his fiercely independent personality. He went on to exhibit briefly with the Berlin Secession, who expelled him after conflicts with Max Liebermann, and with Der Blau Reiter, Die Brücke's competing Expressionist group which leaned toward abstraction.
Like many Expressionists, Nolde portrayed religious and primitive subjects, maintaining a spirituality despite the rapidly-industrializing modern world. He went as far as traveling with a national expedition to German New Guinea in 1912-13, seeking artistic inspiration with which to pursue new subjects. The Expressionists' use of woodcuts as a major medium allowed artists to explore non-European art styles like those Nolde saw in New Guinea, but also continued a longstanding Germanic tradition dating back to Albrecht Dürer.
Nolde alone produced 525 prints in his lifetime, including woodcuts, lithographs and intaglio prints. The current lot is exemplary of Nolde's ability to embue the simple medium with both religious and cultural resonance and emotional depth. Nolde likely identified with his prophet subject, whose great insight enabled him to lead into the future.
The Nazi Regime, which rejected all forms of modernism as "degenerate art," confiscated more than 1,000 of Nolde's works. Despite his protests, many of these were included in the Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich in 1937, which presented abstract works in a disparaging light. Due to this authoritarian, he was forbidden from painting—even in private—after 1941. Schiefler 110.
