Emil Nolde‘s love of water found expression in many his works. He was fascinated by both the close North and Baltic Sea, as well as by the distant South Seas, he loved lakes and rivers, rain showers and snow. At first sight the observer may be surprised by his choice of motif in Dresden, however, the artist found nature in the city and had the opportunity to merge both to an organic whole. On Augustusbrücke, which connects Old and New Town across the river Elbe, the artist found a spot where something primal and natural encounters something man-built, a result of technical progress. Emil Nolde‘s contemporaries also saw his works as reflections of the modern world. The reduced composition of “ Brücke über die Elbe (Augustusbrücke in Dresden)” captures the world of Modernism a nd combines it with ageless grandeur. This way the artist rendered the actual dynamics in the calmness of his swiftly executed watercolors with great mastery. [KK]