EMIL NOLDE: MY WAY OF PAINTING...

Emil Nolde (1867 - 1956) is without a doubt one of the bestknown and most important proponents of German Expressionism, and is represented prominently in the Pinakothek der Moderne with works such as his early masterpiece from 1910 "Tanz um das goldene Kalb" (Dance Around the Golden Calf).
"Meine Art zu malen ist ohne alle Kunststücke..." ("My way of painting is without any sleight of hand..."). The question of how to understand this quote from the artist - which provides the title for this exhibition - is investigated for the first time in a cooperation project supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) on the painting technique and artist's materials used by Emil Nolde. The major partners of this multidisciplinary research initiative are the Doerner Institut of the Bavarian State Painting Collections, the Stiftung Seebüll Ada und Emil Nolde and the Hamburger Kunsthalle.
Through an analysis of the extensive artist archives and the contents of Nolde's studio at his former residence and place of work in Seebüll, as well as investigations into his painting technique and analyses of the materials used in some 45 paintings from the participating collections spanning all the artist's phases of production, for the first time, Emil Nolde's method of painting will be comprehensively investigated in a concerted and scholarly manner.
For the autumn of 2021, the outcomes of the research will be presented in a three-part exhibition in Seebüll, Hamburg and Munich. The studio exhibition in the Pinakothek der Moderne will shine a light on its own collection, and on the particularities of Nolde's working method and the evolution of his technique over his long creative life. Nolde's own written accounts and painting utensils, such as paint tubes and pigments, will complement the presentation. The artistic impact that Nolde sought to create with his expressive works was based in large part on his considered selection and variation of canvas textures, at times visible coloured groundings and underdrawings, as well as his masterly use of pure, unmixed paints. Significant evidence of later reworkings of his paintings or format changes reveal that some were created through extensive working processes, in which Nolde attempted to "steigern" (intensify) his works. Thanks to state-of-the-art imaging techniques, the outcomes of the research can be visualised for visitors and juxtaposed with the originals.