Emil Nolde
The Grotesques

April 30 – July 9, 2017
An exhibition of the Internationale Tage Ingelheim, as a guest at the Museum Wiesbaden.

The artistic work of Emil Nolde is immediately associated with images of brightly colored flower gardens, wildly agitated seascapes under dramatic cloud formations, or intense impressions from the famous trip to the South Seas just before the First World War. Largely unknown is another facet of Nolde’s extensive work: the fantastic and the grotesque. His four-volume autobiography and letters contain numerous references and explanations that clearly show that his artistic work was decisively influenced and shaped by his subjective relationship to the fantastic and grotesque. His first oil painting, the Mountain Giants from 1895/96, and the series of mountain postcards, in which Nolde gives Swiss mountains grotesque human physiognomies, which made him known as a visual artist even before the turn of the twentieth century, testify to Nolde’s intense interest in the fantastic.

From these beginnings, followed in 1905 by the portfolio Grotesques with etchings, up to the years of the professional ban by the National Socialists, the departure from reality towards a grotesque parallel world runs through his work again and again. This is particularly evident in the watercolors that were created in Utenwarf in 1918 and in 1919 during a stay on the Hallig Hooge. Also in a series of paintings, all painted in 1923, Nolde avoids a clear interpretation and legibility of what is depicted. Between 1931 and 1935, with the Fantasies, he painted a series of large-format watercolors that prepare the so-called “Unpainted Pictures”, which were secretly created mainly during the time of the professional ban. In these, Nolde often finds fantastic and grotesque pictorial compositions that only serve as the basis for paintings after 1945.

The exhibition, which is being created in close cooperation with the Nolde Stiftung Seebüll, comprises over 20 paintings and approximately 90 works on paper, some of which have never been publicly shown in an exhibition. After the presentation in the Museum Wiesbaden, this exhibition will be shown from July 23 to October 15, 2017 in the Buchheim Museum of Imagination in Bernried on Lake Starnberg.

The catalog, in which all exhibited works are depicted, contains texts by Caroline Dieterich, Ulrich Luckhardt, Christian Ring, Daniel J. Schreiber and Roman Zieglgänsberger. It is published by Verlag Hatje Cantz.

As the Alte Rathaus in Nieder-Ingelheim is still not available for exhibitions in 2017 due to a general renovation and expansion, the Internationale Tage are moving to the neighboring Museum Wiesbaden, which is gratefully providing its premises.

Museum Wiesbaden
Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 2, 65185 Wiesbaden
(easily accessible on foot from the main train station).
Opening hours:
Tuesday and Thursday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Wednesday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.,
Friday to Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday closed.

At the beginning of May 2018, we will be able to welcome you as usual with a new exhibition in the enlarged and then barrier-free accessible Alten Rathaus in Nieder-Ingelheim. The theme of the Internationale Tage 2018 exhibition will be announced to you in good time.