After beginning his career as a sports journalist and newspaper illustrator, he turned to sculpture, concentrating on figures of boxers, footballers and athletes, often in motion.
Initially influenced by Kai Nielsen, he soon developed a style of his own, creating figures showing the rhythmic movements of arms and legs.
[1][2] Another imposing piece from before the war is his Avismanden Leitriz (1935), depicting a newspaperman dressed in the clothes he wore when selling newspapers in the streets of Copenhagen.
[3] Highly productive in both stone and bronze, Nellemose created the Marble Church statues of Søren Kierkegaard (1972) and Bernhard Severin Ingemann (1988) as well as many groups of footballers.
Among his many portraits, some focused on the face, others as half figures, are those of the archaeologist Peter Vilhelm Glob (1979) and the architect Steen Eiler Rasmussen (1988).