Nolde/kritik/documenta

Emil Nolde (1867 to 1956) is counted among the most recognised artists of classical modernism, yet the way people see him and his work has been shaped both by the stories told about him and by efforts to take those stories apart. Directly after the Second World War, Nolde himself and the art historians of that period presented him as a victim of Nazi persecution. Later critics have turned their attention to his antisemitic views and to the opportunistic way he dealt with the Nazi authorities.

Backed by the Nolde Foundation in Seebüll, the Düsseldorf-based conceptual artist Mischa Kuball (born 1959) searched the documentary record to examine a man whose legacy is deeply contradictory, and to develop a critical perspective on Nolde's output and conduct. His first results were shown at the Draiflessen Collection in Mettingen in the winter of 2020 to 2021. Kuball then continued his research at the invitation of the documenta archive in Kassel.

Building on these findings, the exhibition project "nolde / kritik / documenta" traces how Nolde's life and art are bound together and explores the tensions within modernism that Nolde, as both a man and an artist, can be seen to embody.