Thomas Nölle

• Name — Thomas Nölle • Born — 2 December 1948 • Birthplace — Soest, Germany • Died — 3 June 2020 • Place of death — Badalona (Barcelona), Spain • Occupation — Visual artist and photographer • Known for — Photography, painting, collage, sculpture, assemblage, environmental art, mixed media, video, installation, action art and intervention in public space • Website — http: www.thomas-noelle.net Thomas Nölle (Soest, Germany, December 2, 1948 – Badalona (Barcelona), Spain, June 3, 2020) was a visual artist. He was born in the German city of Soest, in Westphalia. Nölle's experimental drive facilitated his work in various disciplines and with a diversity of techniques, including photography, painting, collage, sculpture, assemblage, environment art, mixed media, video, installation art, action art and interventions in public space.

In 1970, during his university studies, he moved to Bonn, where he had his first artist studio while studying Education at the Universität Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms. Starting in 1988 he made frequent trips to Barcelona and set up his studio in the city's Gothic Quarter in 1989. In 2010 he moved his studio to Vilassar de Mar (Barcelona), while throughout his lifetime he lived for various periods in Brazil, Portugal and Germany. Art historian Jürgen Pech wrote that "Thomas Nölle belongs to two cultures, European and non-European, a circumstance that is evident in his work."

Thomas Nölle's earliest experience with art was through photography. He had his first exhibition of photography at the age of 15, and from the mid-70s onwards he worked as a visual artist in the broadest variety of fields, in a transdisciplinary manner. He would frequently interweave diverse techniques and materials. Thomas Nölle developed personal styles throughout his career, always maintaining his freedom and independence from artistic trends. The foundation of his work is in the experiential observation of the world and of human nature, as well as the temporal connections of history, developing a broad thematic network with multi-referential meanings. From his earliest work he focused his conceptual interest on socio-political, cultural and environmental questions, with an avant la lettre ecological spirit. The main thematic areas of his artistic practice from his earliest period until his final works were, on the one hand, an unequivocal social focus, with a critical vision of the impact on nature of industrialisation and the excesses of consumer society; power conflicts in interactions between cultures and social strata, especially in colonialism and neo-colonialism. On the other hand, he reflected deeply on the context of art, as well as on the interrelation between art, life, memory and history. Experimentation with the greatest diversity of supports, techniques and materials was characteristic of his working praxis, distinguished as it was by an ongoing search for renewed paths and hybrid methods. In the area of photography, his experimentalism was also a constant factor, as he generally used technique in a processual and serialised manner, always in correlation with the subjects or motifs he was working on. The Acervo Giannetti Nölle, established in 2025 and based in Madrid, is responsible for the conservation, cataloguing, digitisation and dissemination of Nölle’s work. The Acervo is working on the gradual publication of the volumes of the Catalogue Raisonné of Thomas Nölle’s complete artworks, organised chronologically.

In 1978 Nölle celebrated an individual exhibition at the Kurhaus Dangast, which was known at the time as the gathering place of the Oldenburg Free Academy revolving around the figure of Joseph Beuys. His numerous travels in European cities in the 1960s and 1970s, including Pompey, Paris and London, and in countries all over the world, including Greece, Russia, India, Egypt and in the Caribbean, left their mark from the start and were often the subject of his photographic work. In the period 1979 to 1981 he set off on a long journey through various countries in South America, including Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. Over this period he created photographic series and photo-performance work with a strongly social orientation, as seen in his exhibition, Notes on South America – A Journey | 1979–1981, at Casa de América, Madrid (6.02 – 28.03.2020): "The subjects made manifest in the photographs of this period from 1979 to 1981 reveal a gaze focused on the social sphere, but also on environmental problems and the relationships between human beings and nature." These series were reproduced in his last artist book Notes from South America – A Journey | 1979–1981 (2020). Upon his return to Germany from his journey through South America, Nölle settled again in Bonn, carrying out intense artistic activity. Between 1983 and 1990 he devoted especially to large-format painting and photo-collage. During the 1980s he exhibited in various solo and group shows in Germany, with the following highlights: Kunsthistorisches Institut, Bonn, Yves Klein, Amongst Others (Solo, 1983); Kunstverein Bonn (1984), with the participation amongst other of Jean Tinguely, who was also involved in his action Das ist doch keine Art [That's no Art/no Way] together with Jürgen Pech; Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf together with Joseph Beuys, Niki de Saint Phalle, Jürgen Klauke and Robert Rauschenberg, amongst others. In Düsseldorf he carried his public action Art is Health – Remember Yves Klein (1984), a phrase that was printed onto the tramways moving about the city. As was the case for Yves Klein, whose work was a point of reference for Nölle, art and life constituted for him an inseparable dynamic unity. His individual exhibition in the Orangerie Schloss Augustusburg in Brühl, Room to Move (1988), brought together the majority of his large-format pictorial work on the period 1985–1988, and featured a site-specific installation of the same name on the subject of the frontiers of knowledge. His painting addresses subjects related to the fragility of memory, the fragmentation of history and human limitations. Dominated by earth tones, his paintings use overlayered material substrates upon which he inscribes figures and symbolic shapes. In 1991 he published a monographic catalogue of the pictorial work done in the period 1985–1991.

Colonisation, neo-colonialism and the confrontations between cultures were amongst the subjects addressed by Nölle in various works, such as the series of photo-performance and electrographs entitled Um índio em Brasília [A Native in Brasília] (1980), or in the painting and mixed media series Mundus Novus (1990) on the colonisation of Latin America, exhibited in several solo shows e.g. at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, Königswinter, and the Städtischen Galerie Suhl, Germany. He returned to the subject of neo-colonialism in extensive series of photographs and video art produced from 2002 to 2008 which deal critically with racism, discrimination, forced acculturalisation and the loss of memory, especially in relation to indigenous and African peoples. These works were shown in 2008 in the solo exhibition Tiempos Dorados [Golden Times] at the MEIAC, Ibero-American Museum of Contemporary Art, in Badajoz, Spain, curated by Nilo Casares, with the publication of a monographic catalogue. In 2015 a selection of this series was exhibited in Künstlerhaus Wien, Vienna, as part of the exhibition Über: ich [About: Me], curated by Eugenia Gortchokova.

Another aspect of his production was dedicated to video art and audio-visual installations. In 2006 he had a solo exhibition entitled Between the Images at the V International Image Festival of Manizales (Colombia), where he presented five audio-visual installations. That same year, Nölle participated in the 12th Canariasmediafest – Festival Internacional de Artes y Culturas Digitales de Gran Canaria with the audio-visual installation Hall of Fame (Nölle/cv8.org), which dealt with the perverse and ephemeral star-system market. The video installation Angel's Leap (Whatever Will Be, Will Be...) which addresses the fallacy of utopianism, was presented in 2008 at the MEIAC (Badajoz), the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (Germany, 2008–09) and the Neue Galerie Graz (Austria, 2009). An emblematic piece of videoart in his production is Tour en l'air – La vie en rose (2012), an allegory of both the fragility of life and of our memory.

In 1993, Thomas Nölle became the principal patron and co-founder of the Asociación de Cultura Contemporánea L'Angelot in Barcelona, together with Claudia Giannetti, an art historian and his wife and companion since 1980. L'Angelot was the first space in Spain dedicated exclusively to art and new technologies. Nölle ceded the space in Barcelona's Gothic Quarter for the development of the programming of this non-profit association, which was active until 1999. The association carried out more than 70 activities, including exhibitions, seminars, lectures, performances, workshops and publications, acquiring recognized prestige in the Barcelona artistic scene.

His artworks have been shown in numerous international solo and group exhibitions in well-known museums and are represented in several private and public collections: • 1977: Ritterschen Buchhandlung, Soest (Solo) • 1977: Produzenten Galerie, Zürich (Solo) • 1978: Kurhaus Dangast, Dangast (Solo) • 1979: Werkstatt Galerie Bonn (Solo) • 1983: Kunsthistorisches Institut, Universität Bonn, Klein unter anderem (Solo) • 1984: Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn • 1984: Das ist doch keine Art. Action art with Jürgen Pech during Jean Tinguely's Performance, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn • 1984: Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf • 1984: Kunst ist Gesundheit – Remember Yves Klein. Action art on trams in the Düsseldorf city centre • 1985: Mülheim Art Museum, Mülheim • 1987: Kunsthistorisches Institut, Universität Bonn, Bilder 1986/87 (Solo) • 1988: Orangerie Schloss Augustusburg, Brühl, Room to Move (Solo) • 1990: Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, Königswinter, Mundus Novus I (Solo) • 1990: Syndikathalle Raue Gallery, Bonn, Out of Limits • 1992: Städtische Galerie, Suhl, Mundus Novus II (Solo) • 1993: L'Angelot Asociación de Cultura Contemporánea, Barcelona • 1994: Galeria Manoel Macedo, Belo Horizonte, La mer-e (Solo) • 1996: Purgatori II, Valencia, Fabled Sea (Solo) • 1996: Centro Cultural Brasil-España, Belo Horizonte, Pontes da Memória (Solo) • 1998: Transforma Espacio, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Symphonie Technique (Solo) • 2000: Café Schilling, Barcelona, Musée Méditerranée (Solo) • 2002: Art Museum of Sabadell, Sin salida de emergencia • 2002: Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico DF, Mexico • 2002: MUVIM, Museo Valenciano de la Ilustración y la Modernidad, Valencia, Observatori III – International Festival of Artistic Research • 2003: Arts Centre Gallery, Andorra, Tiempos dispersos (Solo) • 2004: Museum of Contemporary Art of Ibiza, Pronóstica • 2005: Art Centre Gallery, Barcelona, Collector's Dream (Solo) • 2006: Centro Cultural de España, Mexico DF, Silencio vicioso (Solo) • 2006: V International Image Festival, Manizales, Colombia, Between the Images (Solo) • 2006: Gran Canaria Espacio Digital, XII Canariasmediafest, Gran Canaria • 2008: MEIAC – Museum of Ibero-American Contemporary Art, Badajoz, Tiempos dorados – Golden Times (Solo) • 2009: ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, The discreet charm of technology. Art in Spain • 2009: Neue Galerie Graz, Austria • 2010: Factoría Santiago, Santiago de Compostela, Way of Light (Solo) • 2014: Arte Periférica Gallery, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Musa x paradisiaca (Solo) • 2015: Künstlerhaus Wien, Vienna, Über: ich • 2015: Mare Rostrum Project, CCCB – Barcelona Centre for Contemporary Culture • 2015: Re:NEW Festival (Drap-Art), Pittsburgh, USA • 2016: SEA≈STORE, Plaza dels Àngels (Drap-Art'16), Barcelona • 2017: Goethe-Institut of Lisbon, Elsewhere – An Improbable Journey, with Carlos Gasparinho • 2018: National Museum of Romanticism, Madrid, By the Way (Solo) • 2020: Puxagallery, Madrid, En Passant (Solo) • 2020: Casa de América, Madrid, Notes on South America - A Journey | 1979-1981 (Solo) • 2025: Lux 48, Madrid, Thomas Nölle - My Way (solo exhibition)