- Artist or Maker
- Emil Nolde
Denmark, also active Germany, 1867-1956 - Title
- Prophet
- Date Made
- 1912
- Medium
- woodcut
- Dimensions
- Image: 12 5/8 × 8 3/8 in. (32.07 × 21.27 cm)
Sheet: 16 3/8 × 12 3/4 in. (41.59 × 32.39 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.82.288.239
- Collecting Area
- Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies
- Curatorial Notes
Emil Nolde’s Prophet is one of the artist’s best-known works and exemplifies the German Expressionist woodcut. The Christ-like visage emerges from the sheet, evoking the Sudarium, a relic said to depict the face of Christ that miraculously appeared on a piece of cloth. But the print also retains the rough contours of carved wood, an image grounded in its material. This suggestion of an identity rooted in wood, a material with a mythological association to German history and culture, has disturbing resonances with Nolde’s later embrace of Nazi ideology.
Exhibition Label:
The Expressive Gaze: Portraits and Self-Portraits, 2022, Erin Maynes
- Selected Bibliography
- Papanikolas, Theresa. Doctrinal Nourishment: Art and Anarchism in the Time of James Ensor. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2009.
