Emil Nolde Quotations

Clever people master life; the wise illuminate it and create fresh difficulties.

The artist need not know very much, best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as he breathes or walks.

The art of an artist must be his own art. It is... always a continuous chain of little inventions, little technical discoveries of ones own, in ones relation to the tool, the material and the colors.

What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

Art is exalted above religion and race. Not a single solitary soul these days believes in the religions of the Assyrians, the Egyptians and the Greeks... Only their art, whenever it was beautiful, stands proud and exalted, rising above all time.

There cannot be creation without a lot of energy.

Colours in vibration, peeling like silver bells and clanging like bronze bells, proclaiming happiness, passion and love, soul, blood and death.

Pictures are spiritual beings. The soul of the painter lives within them.

Yellow can express happiness, and then again, pain. There is flame red, blood red, and rose red; there is silver blue, sky blue, and thunder blue; every color harbors its own soul, delighting or disgusting or stimulating me.

As an artist I am attracted by decadence, by those who exhaust their lives in the shallow pursuits of pleasure. Occasionally, I feel that spiritually I participate in all these kinds of lives.

A work becomes a work of art when one re-evaluates the values of nature and adds one's own spirituality.

Sometimes it seems to me that I am capable of absolutely nothing, but that nature through me can accomplish a great deal.

There is silver blue, sky blue and thunder blue. Every colour holds within it a soul, which makes me happy or repels me, and which acts as a stimulus. To a person who has no art in him, colours are colours, tones tones...and that is all. All their consequences for the human spirit, which range between heaven to hell, just go unnoticed.