Nolde museum Seebüll

Emil Nolde (1867-1956) is regarded as one of the leading painters of Expressionism and as one of the great water colourists within the art of the 20th century. His former domicile Seebüll is situated on the border to Denmark in the middle of the wide marsh scenery close to the North Sea. It was built from 1927 to 1937 according to drafts made by the painter himself. It was a residential building with a studio and a room for paintings. It became a place of refuge for Nolde when his works were stigmatized by the Nazi regime and confiscated in German museums. After Nolde’s death the peculiar, castle-like building with its rich artistic estate was opened to the public under the name of “Stiftung Seebüll Ada und Emil Nolde” (Seebüll Foundation Ada and Emil Nolde). This happened due to Nolde’s last will and testament.
Annually changing exhibitions present a new cross-section of Nolde’s complete works in Seebüll every year: paintings, water-colours, graphics and arts and crafts. Altogether they amount to about 170 works. Among the first named is one series of the “Ungemalten Bilder” (unpainted paintings) which Nolde painted secretly in the time of the ban on painting between 1938 and 1945. In Nolde’s former studio a selection of his religious paintings is exhibited, among them the nine-part “Das Leben Christi” (The life of Christ) from 1911/12. The abundant wealth of the collection and the unusual variety of the works with landscapes and seas, portraits, flower gardens, grotesqueries and fantasies, with paintings from the nightlife of Berlin city and from the journey to the South Seas facilitate new surprising understandings of Nolde’s artistic creation in a varying selection time after time.