Copenhagen

We took the train from Copenhagen to Humlebaek, which is 20 miles outside the city and worth the travel effort. The sculpture garden is stunning, the views of the ocean and Sweden amazing, the architecture modern and very Scandinavian. They had an incredible exhibit of Emile Nolde, who was a German Expressionist painter. We couldn’t take photos of the exhibit, unfortunately. Here is a link to one of his paintings. His early work included these subtle calm paintings of foggy landscapes that I loved, then explosions of colors in subjects like poppies and then Van Gogh-like swirly paintings of vibrant color and impasto painting strokes. If you owned any of these paintings, you’d never get anything done because you wouldn’t be able to stop staring at them. Then the first world war radically changed him. Then the second world war. I didn’t like these as much, except for a couple of them, a group in a theater and a group in a bar. A horse on a battle field was excellent, too, and reminded me of Picasso’s Guernica. Nolde did these weird caricature paintings too. But even the ones I didn’t like as much were powerful, emotional and full of energy. Nolde is incredible, and we had never heard of him!

The sculpture garden was wonderful as was the bit of the permanent collection on display during the Nolde special exhibit.