Bidding farewell to Ostende, Belgium, Felix Nussbaum painted the painting Mastenwald. The painter had spent several months in the port city in 1935 before moving on to Brussels.
The last survivor of the catastrophe sits with his back to an apocalyptic urban scene: an organ grinder, the melancholy alter-ego of the painter Felix Nussbaum. He is leaning against the long since silenced organ and looks contemplatively into the emptiness.
Felix Nussbaum: Selbstbildnis mit Maske und Schalltrichter [ Self-Portrait with Mask and Paper Horn], painting (ca. 1936)
During his years of exile, masks took on a central role in the self-portraits of the painter Felix Nussbaum. Even before, Nussbaum had used masks as a metaphor to give expression to the two-faced character of reality.
Felix Nussbaum: Self-portrait with Tea Towel, painting (1935)
The effect of exile on one’s own facial features was the subject of a series of self-portraits by painter Felix Nussbaum which were created in front of a mirror beginning in 1936. Under the deformation of his face and the external reality laid over his face like a grimace, Nussbaum sought an inner, undisguised self.
