CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 1/22/2015

Emil Nolde: My Garden Full of Flowers

In Dumont's stunning new release, Emil Nolde: My Garden Full of Flowers, Manfred Reuther describes the existential threat that grew up around the painter in the 1930s. "More than one thousand of his works were confiscated from German museums in conjunction with the action against 'degenerate art.' Almost simultaneously with the completion of his house and his seventieth birthday, the bitter news of the Degenerate Art exhibition, in which modernist artists were pilloried, reached him from Munich. Nolde was the artist with the most works in the exhibition, and he was prohibited from painting in 1941. After the end of National Socialist rule, when his 'tied hands,' as he wrote, were again 'freed,' he painted, inspired by the abundance of flowers in his garden, 'at first a few garden pictures with large and glowing poppies in order to get accustomed to colors again.'" Featured image, "Large Poppies (Red, Red, Red)" (1942) is reproduced from My Garden Full of Flowers.