Emil Nolde. Das Meer / The Sea

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Expressionist painter Emil Nolde (1867-1956) was a trailblazing virtuoso of watercolor painting. Applying paint to paper with incomparable intensity, he created richly luminous paintings of brooding, romantic landscapes and alienating modern city scenes. The sea occupies a singularly important place in his oeuvre; Nolde began painting sea watercolors around 1920. Already in 1921, the art historian Max Sauerlandt observed that Nolde saw the sea "not from a beach or a boat but as it exists in itself, devoid of any reference to man, eternally in motion, ever changing, living out its life in and for itself: a divine, self-consuming primal force that, in its untrammeled freedom, has existed unchanged since the very first day of creation." Emile Nolde: The Sea gathers together nearly 30 of these beautiful watercolor paintings, many of them previously unpublished, in a charming gift-book format.