“The dancers gave me inspirations for my paintings [...]” 5. Nolde was for years in personal contact with both expressive dancers, whom he had met in the rhythm school Émile Jaques-Dalcrozes (1865–1950) in Hellerau.6 Inspired by a performance of Mary Wigman, the painting “Female Dancers” (cf. fig. 2) was created in 1920, in which the wide, ornamentally patterned robes, which visually support the sweeping movements of Free Dance, become the main subject of the painting. The dynamic and intense expressive possibilities of Free Dance, which are subject to immediate emotions, animated above all the paintings of the Expressionists Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938), Max Pechstein (1881–1955) and likewise Nolde. Dance as a physical way of representing liveliness provided an unadulterated and immediate naturalness that the Expressionists also sought and found in the cultures of indigenous peoples. “When I later traveled in foreign countries and was with the native peoples of Oceania, it was my special desire to get to know some firstnesses of nature and people completely untouched by any civilization.”7 Together with his wife Ada, Emil Nolde traveled in 1913–1914 as a participant in the last expedition of the German Empire to Papua New Guinea, the then protectorate of German New Guinea. In 1936, encouraged by National Socialist propaganda and with the regime in mind as the addressee, he reflected on his task within the voyage in his memoir World and Homeland. The South Seas Journey 1913–1914: “The ‘demographic’, the study of the racial peculiarities of the population, was my free and particular task.”8 In the course of colonization, a notion of the peoples of Oceania condensed at the beginning of the 20th century, based on cultural goods brought back from the colonized territories, on the advertising of the “exotic” in consumer goods, on growing ethnological collections, and on an increased reception of Oceania in popular literature, which resulted in a stereotypical exaggeration of the “wild primitive peoples”9 among Europeans. With their works, Expressionists in search of immediacy, saw in untouched nature and population the perfect execution of life and power, supported notions of “primordial worlds alien to life” that became entrenched in the collective memory of Europe’s Western population.10 These were motifs that Nolde had already studied in ethnological museums before his travels to overseas territories and had depicted in his works. künstlerisches Erlebnis […]«.4 Bühnenauftritte von Mary Wigman und ihrer Schülerin Gret Palucca setzten direkte Impulse für seine Arbeiten: »Es gaben die Tänzerinnen Anregungen zu meinen Bildern […]«.5 Nolde stand über Jahre in persönlichem Kontakt mit beiden Ausdruckstänzerinnen, die er in der Rhythmusschule Émile Jaques-Dalcrozes (1865–1950) in Hellerau kennengelernt hatte.6 Inspiriert durch eine Vorführung Mary Wigmans entstand 1920 das Gemälde »Tänzerinnen« (Abb. 2), worin die weiten, ornamental gemusterten Gewänder, die die ausladenden Bewegungen des freien Tanzes optisch unterstützen, zum Hauptgegenstand des Gemäldes werden. Die dynamischen und intensiven Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten des freien Tanzes, die den unmittelbaren Emotionen unterliegen, belebten vor allem die Bilder der Expressionisten Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938), Max Pechstein (1881–1955) und ebenso Nolde. Tanz als körperliche Darstellungsweise von Lebendigkeit lieferte jene unverfälschte und unmittelbare Natürlichkeit, welche die Expressionisten auch in den Kulturen der indigenen Völker suchten und fanden. »Als ich später in fremden Ländern reiste und bei den Urvölkern der Südsee war, war es mein besonderes Verlangen, einige ganz von jeder Zivilisation unberührte Erstheiten der Natur und Menschen kennenzulernen.«7 Abb. 1 »Junge Tänzerinnen« / 1945
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