Emil Nolde: Unpainted Pictures

In 1941, the president of the Reichs Chamber of the Visual Arts in Berlin prohibited the painter Emil Nolde “from all professional activities in the field of the visual arts.” “I was in the midst of beautiful, productive painting when this ban on painting and selling arrived,” Nolde recalled later. “The brush fell out of my hand.” Nolde continued to paint during the eight years of his ostracism from his home in Seebüll. He called the more than 1,300 small-format watercolors and gouaches that he produced “unpainted pictures,” and wrote that “The small works on paper provided me with great pleasure personally and as a painter.” This book illustrates over 100 of these works-more than 50 of them for the first time-as well as selected oil paintings.