Emil Nolde. Die Pracht der Farben | The Splendor of Colors is the name of the large-scale summer exhibition that will be mounted at the Museum Frieder Burda from June 15 to October 13, 2013. It is the first extensive presentation of Nolde’s works in southern Germany in many years. It will comprise about fifty-five oil paintings and circa twenty watercolors ranging from the beginning of his artistic career to his late work. The exhibition was developed in collaboration with the Nolde Foundation Seebüll and will be curated by Professor Dr. Manfred Reuther, the former director of the Nolde Foundation.

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) counts among the most important artists of Expressionism.

The comprehensive presentation will feature the principal themes of his creative work. Besides landscapes, it includes figure paintings and portraits, religious motifs, as well as impressions from his journey to the South Sea.

The lushly colored paintings reveal the complexity of Nolde’s lifeworld. What they all share is the emotional power of color. Manfred Reuther: “From the beginning of his painterly work, Nolde’s artistic development was the path to color as his ultimate means of expression, which he increasingly mastered.” Nolde was convinced: “Colors were a joy to me, and I felt as if they loved my hands.” His colorful paintings and watercolors testify to his affinity with nature and his search for primal human states. Radiant red, dark blue, deep black, and intense lilac—these are some of the expressive colors Emil Nolde used to paint romantic landscapes and dramatic seascapes.

In addition to his lushly colored oil paintings, Nolde’s numerous watercolors reflect his eagerness to experiment. Manfred Reuther explains: “His painting with watercolors is characterized by extraordinary diversity. The unique quality of watercolors accommodated his pursuit of spontaneity and direct expression. He painted with a completely drenched, heavy brush in rapid, fluid movements, attempting to switch off his inhibiting reason and primarily follow his instinct. Pictures grew out of irregularities, spots, and dribbles. The painter sought to encounter and achieve a union with the pictorial material with the directness of artisanry.”

The works on paper being presented in Baden-Baden include several from the Unpainted Pictures series, watercolors that the artist completed in his studio in Seebüll “from his imagination” during the period he was barred from painting.

The museum architecture by the New York-based architect Richard Meier provides the works in the exhibition with an attractive framework. Large windows and continuously new and interesting perspectives into the park landscape blend the inside with the outside and create an exciting combination of art and nature.

Franz Gertsch, born in 1930 in Möringen in the canton of Bern, is one of most important contemporary Swiss artists. The exhibition will feature about thirty-five large-format paintings and woodcuts that represent a cross-section of his artistic work. Franz Gertsch became known for his photorealistic and hyperrealistic painting. This was later supplemented by woodcuts that are unique in terms of their technique and format. He approaches reality in an extraordinary way in his painterly and graphic work. Based on photographs or slides, the paintings done with brushes adhere to an individual logic within the pictures themselves that aims at the absolute coherence of all of the elements.

Franz Gertsch has counted among the most prominent artists worldwide since his participation in documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972.