Bronze sculpture by Emil Nolde: “Burma Dancer” (1914)

It must have been a great adventure for the farm boy from Nolde: From the beginning of October 1913 until the summer of 1914, he accompanied the "Medical-Demographic German New Guinea Expedition." Nolde, the artist, concentrated entirely on the people, drawing and painting them in watercolors, and was fascinated by their rituals. On Java, he was able to attend a royal festival. Having trained as a woodcarver in his youth, he was so impressed by the dancers and their controlled performance down to the smallest movement that, on the intervening voyages, he occupied himself with capturing their grace in figures made of firewood from the ship's galley.