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Lot Essay
Dr. Manfred Reuther from the Nolde Stiftung, Seebüll, has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
On 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 the period of the worst persecutions, when he was actually forbidden to paint, he preserved his inner freedom by secretly executing hundreds of watercolors in his studio in Seebüll. These he called his Ungemälte Bilder, in which he used the technique of "wet on wet" as in his earlier watercolors, allowing wet paint to flow over wet paper, in order to create spontaneous, evocative images in fluid, transparent colors. Most of these works resemble illustrations of some invented story-line, spawned as they were from the artist's fertile imagination. Almost all are figurative.
Das Paar, Phantasien 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 prospective 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 color which gave them birth" (Emil Nolde, New York, 1963, pp. 72-73).
A favorite theme of Nolde's Phantasien is the relationship between men and women. In Das Paar, Phantasien the overlaying of the faces and the blend of colors creates an extremely mystical conception. Through this composition we can see how he developed the medium of watercolor, making the most of its evocative qualities, creating unique images with informality and spontaneity.
On 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 the period of the worst persecutions, when he was actually forbidden to paint, he preserved his inner freedom by secretly executing hundreds of watercolors in his studio in Seebüll. These he called his Ungemälte Bilder, in which he used the technique of "wet on wet" as in his earlier watercolors, allowing wet paint to flow over wet paper, in order to create spontaneous, evocative images in fluid, transparent colors. Most of these works resemble illustrations of some invented story-line, spawned as they were from the artist's fertile imagination. Almost all are figurative.
Das Paar, Phantasien 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 prospective 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 color which gave them birth" (Emil Nolde, New York, 1963, pp. 72-73).
A favorite theme of Nolde's Phantasien is the relationship between men and women. In Das Paar, Phantasien the overlaying of the faces and the blend of colors creates an extremely mystical conception. Through this composition we can see how he developed the medium of watercolor, making the most of its evocative qualities, creating unique images with informality and spontaneity.