In 1906, Emil Nolde was invited by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff to join the expressionist Die Brücke group in Dresden. He exhibited in Dresden and began to make woodcuts, including Storm (1906) and Egyptian Woman II (1910). He also continued making etchings, such as Flensburg Harbour (1907), and lithographs, like Music Hall III (1907–1915).
Nolde’s paintings and prints are distinctive for their saturated colour, sense of raw intensity, distorted line, and tormented interiority. Even though he joined the Nazi party in 1920 and knew top Nazis personally, a great many of Nolde’s works were confiscated or destroyed.
In the early 1930s Nolde wrote a two-volume autobiography, Das eigene Leben (My Own Life) (1932) and Jahre der Kämpfe (Years of Struggle) (1934), hoping unsuccessfully to win Nazi favour and claiming he was a patriotic (and likewise antisemitic) German.
Initially ‘whitewashed’ in post-war art historical accounts, Nolde is more candidly discussed now. He is known for the portrait paintings and prints Red-Haired Girl (1919) and Self Portrait (c. 1917), the biblical scenes Crucifixion (1912), The Last Supper (1909), The Burial of Christ (1915), and Christ and the Sinner (1926), and the fields of flowers Sunflowers (1930) and Dahlias and Sunflowers (1928).
