Emil Nolde - Weiße und rote Amaryllis - image-1

Lot 253 D

Emil Nolde - Weiße und rote Amaryllis

Auction 1143 - overview Cologne
29.11.2019, 18:00 - Modern Art I
Estimate: 80.000 € - 100.000 €
Result: 80.600 € (incl. premium)

Emil Nolde

Weiße und rote Amaryllis
Post 1950

Watercolour on Japan laid paper 34.8 x 47.1 cm Framed under glass. Signed 'Nolde.' in pencil lower right. - In perfect condition.

“It was on Als, in the middle of the summer. The colours of the flowers irresistibly drew me to them and - almost suddenly - I was painting. My first little garden paintings were created. The blooming colours of the flowers and the purity of these colours, I loved them. I loved the flowers in their fate: sprouting up, blooming, luminously glowing, sagging, withering, ending up tossed aside in the ditch.” (Emil Nolde, Jahre der Kämpfe, Flensburg 1958, p. 95).
When the artist writes about the spontaneous, fulfilling experience of blooming colours - while nonetheless immediately bringing up the topos of becoming and decline and thus, with a melancholy gravity, making them a symbol of the fate of humanity - this reveals above all the metaphysical as well as spiritual qualities which he saw inscribed within nature and flowers. Our depiction of white and red amaryllis flowers from the 1950s can almost be understood symbolically as a finale to the rapture of the colours of the artist Emil Nolde, who had by then spent nearly 40 years intensively exploring the form of the flower watercolour. Following his move to Seebüll, Emil Nolde had already characterised his flower and garden pictures as “more deeply, grandly grasped and more melancholically saturated” (cited in Martin Urban, Emil Nolde - Blumen und Tiere. Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, Cologne 1980, p. 734) - a tendency that can also be identified in our watercolour. In the fine equilibrium of the luminous flowers and sky-blue background, the luxuriant amaryllis flowers reveal the untamed power of Nolde's late work.

Certificate

With a photo-certificate by Manfred Reuther, Seebüll, dated 18 September 2003; the work is registered in the Nolde-Stiftung Seebüll.

Provenance

Private collection, South Germany