Nobody had made the same full use of the properties of acids and metal in this way before. Having drown on the copper-plate and left areas of it bare… - Emil Nolde

If I were tied to the letter of the Scriptures and rigid dogma, I believe I could not have painted these profoundly felt paintings about the Eucharist and the 'Pentecost' [religious paintings, he made c. 1909-11) I had to be artistically free - not have God before me. like a steely Assyrian ruler, but God in me, hot and holy like Christ's love.

There is silver blue, sky blue and thunder blue. Every color 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, colors are colors, tones tones.. ..and that is all. All their consequences for the human spirit, which range between heaven to hell, just go unnoticed.

In our own time, every earthenware vessel or piece of jewelry, every utensil or garment, has to be designed on paper before it is made. Primitive peoples, however, create their works with the material itself in the artist's hand, held in his fingers. They aspire to express delight in form and the love of creating it. Absolute originality, the intense and often grotesque expression of power and life in very simple forms – that may be why we like these works of native art.