The flower paintings of Emil Nolde, either in watercolour or painting are enchantingly beautiful. He started with these subjects in 1909 saying, ‘It was on the island of Als in the middle of summer. The colours of the flowers attracted me irresistibly, and, almost suddenly, I was painting. So my first garden paintings were created.’
As we read in his notes, Mein Leben (My Life), ‘It was a difficult struggle with the colour… In my painting, I always wanted the colours, through me as the painter, to work logically on the canvas as though nature herself created the image, as ore and crystallisations forms, as moss and algae grows, as under the rays of the sun a flower unwraps and must bloom.’
His subjects were of the great and overpowering aspects of nature. His idea of nature was closely related to his heartfelt ideas and emotions.
Everything primeval always bound my senses. The great raging sea is still it its original state, the wind, the sun, even the starry sky is also probably still the same as it was almost fifty thousand years ago.
Nolde’s fixation with the primordial greatly influenced his use of colour, making it more concentrated and intense. His effort to paint his vision of the world through the strength and effect of pure paint evolved to a slow maturity. The first culmination of this came with his first flower and garden paintings from 1906 to 1908. Only in 1905 did he become acquainted with Van Gogh, Gauguin, Monet and the other French artists, as well as the art of primitive cultures. Seeing these was the key to unlocking his full potential as an artist. Now, Emil Hansen, born in Nolde, found his unique painting vocabulary that found its climax in the ecstatic rush of colours which burst forth with a barbaric fire and sensuality. Emil Nolde was one of the great innovators of watercolour.
The series of religious paintings done by Emil Nolde are some of the most moving examples of natural experience. In 1912 he painted the nine piece altar The Life of Christ and the triptych Maria Aegyptica. In his notes, he wrote, ‘the colours are the material of the painter, the colours in their own lives, crying and laughing, luck and laughter, passionate and holy as love songs and the erotic, as song and choral music.’ In these paintings an ecstatic religious experience and feeling breaks forth. The sublime, the holy, the saintly speak from these works. They were to have taken a central place in the religious section of the 1956 World Exposition in Brussels but the Catholic clergy protested.
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Summer, 1913. Oil on canvas, 88 × 104 cm.
Sprengel collection, Kunstsammlung Hannover, Hannover.
Max Pechstein, Seated young woman (Moritzburg), 1910.
Oil on canvas, 80 × 70 cm. Neue Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin.
Emil Nolde, Garden Full of Flowers, 1908.
Oil on canvas, 63 × 78.5 cm. Osthaus Museum, Hagen.
Christian Rohlfs, House in Soest, 1916.
Tempera on canvas, 80 × 100 cm. Private collection.
Christian Rolfs is only marginally associated with the Brücke. He was linked to Emil Nolde by a lifelong friendship since 1905. Both artists were united by their love of nature. Both sought to capture their view of the world in pure colour. In 1901 Rolfs was called to the Folkwang School in Hagen. Only in 1927, at the age of 78, did he travel south to Ascona. In the thin and relaxed atmosphere, he found his way to his own late painting style. The vigorous southern light fascinated him. He was entranced by the tropical plant life. The rush of colour that surrounded all the vegetation overpowered him, he, who had come out of the foggy north. ‘Everything is colour, light and a thrill for the eyes, enchanting and delightful and constantly changing from hour to hour.’ The material possibilities with regard to painting mediums always interested Christian Rohlfs, and he experimented with great curiosity. In the early years, he used a palette knife and applied the paint with wallops onto the canvas. With thin paint, he swabbed it up with a rag. He carefully chose the paper surfaces for his watercolours, as he incorporated them into his compositions. His watercolours display a flair for the immaterial. His entire body of work is closely based on nature.
From 1911–1912, the personal style of many painters became more turbulent and excited. In his late works, Lovis Corinth, usually a high-spirited Impressionist began to mirror the style of the Expressionists At the same time, Paul Klee’s personal style became marked by a rhythmic, mostly line-like or two-dimensional technique inspired by simultaneity and universal dynamism. In his work, Klee translates technical-mechanical concepts into movement, as expressed by arrows, triangles, and repetition of shapes.
Under the leadership of Ludwig Meidner, the Pathetiker group was formed in the early part of 1912. Otto Gleichmann, Richard Janthur, Jakob Steinhardt and Erich Waske belonged to this group. The art historian Paul Vogt commented: ‘Like the sound of a raging scream, their appearance required the strongest means possible to be heard in the Babylonian commotion of so many voices during that time.’ Hardly any other early Expressionist work produced in the years between 1912 and 1914 exudes such a singular and all-encompassing momentum of shock and emotion as those of Ludwig Meidner. His Apocalyptic Landscapes are a substratum of concentrated energy. Bursting houses, writhing, breaking lines of streets and fleeing people define the chaotic landscape. Meidner described his condition at the time, as if seismographically measuring the disaster of the impending world war:
Painful impulses made me break everything that was straight and vertical. To spread ruins, shreds and ash across all landscapes. How I always built ruins of houses on my cliffs, woefully divided, and the lamenting call of the bare trees rose up to the croaking skies above. As calling, warning voices the mountains floated in the background, the comet laughed hoarsely and the aeroplanes sailed as if they were hellish dragonflies in the yellow night time storm.
In the twenties, Meidner increasingly dedicated himself to his literary talents.
Among the main representatives of German Expressionism, Karl Hofer defines himself by the emphasis of formality and by a limited colour range. His unmistakeable style was formed around 1919; his paintings marked by an angular roughness and a dry colour, tending to a classic constructive composition. He wrote in 1953 in his memoires:
I possessed the Romantic; it was the Classic that I was looking for… I never created a figure according to the random nature of appearance… The ecstasy of Expressionism did not suite me… Man and the human were and will always be the object of my art.
Lovis Corinth, Walchensee, 1921.
Oil on canvas, Neue Pinakothek, Munich.
Ludwig Meidner, Apocalyptic City, 1913. Oil on canvas, 81.3 × 115.5 cm.
LWL–Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster.
Karl Hofer, Circus Artists, c. 1921.
Oil on canvas, 148 × 118.5 cm. Folkwang Museum, Essen.
Paul Klee, Villa R, 1919.
Oil on cardboard, 26.5 × 22 cm. Kunstmuseum, Basel.
Franz Marc,