‘FIGURALE – ETA’ Ernst Wilhelm Nay

• Painting from the ‘Fugale Bilder’ period, which marks a new artistic beginning for Nay • A dynamic, lively composition with a characteristic, warm, ochre-brown colour scheme • Already exhibited in 1950 at the comprehensive retrospective of Nay’s work in Hanover Whilst the immediate post-war years were characterised by the fairy-tale-like, colourful ‘Hekate’ paintings, the new phase of ‘Fugal Pictures’ began in 1948. Drawn elements return; black and white take on a new significance; and instead of pure primary colours, subdued mixed colours increasingly come to the fore. Nay engages intensively with the ‘intermediate realm of colour tones’, comparable to the chromaticism of music (cf. Siegfried Gohr, in: WVZ, Vol. I, p. 18). The new works illustrate Nay’s shift towards the plane; the individual colour fields show hardly any brushstrokes, whilst the movement within the picture is instead conveyed through the black linear elements. ‘The titles of this series of paintings, to which Nay frequently prefixes the term "Figurale", suggest that his art – despite its increasing abstraction – takes the human figure as its subject. Often, however, the motif is not in a representational-literary sense, but rather in a ‘fugal’ method, familiar from music as a theme of repetition and inversion. Similarly, Nay incorporates individual complexes of form into the picture through variation and inversion, so that the term ‘fugue’ or ‘fugal’ aptly describes this compositional order. By applying this term to his paintings, Nay emphasises the abstract element of his artistic approach. (…) Nay’s paintings from 1949 to 1951 lie precisely at the intersection of non-representational and representational art, and yet they seemed so unusual and alien at the time that they remained largely misunderstood by the art-loving public. It is a testament to the steadfastness of his artistic path that Nay did not allow himself to be unsettled by criticism, but instead accepted resistance as a challenge, which led him to intensify his work and resulted in a rich body of bold paintings, including large-format works." (Elisabeth Nay-Scheibler, WVZ, Vol. I, p. 294.) | 1902 Berlin - Köln 1968 | Moderne Kunst | Gemälde | Nummer: 26x2496 | Provenance: Hauswedell & Nolte, Hamburg 9.6.1984, Los 1177a; Privatsammlung, Norddeutschland, bei Vorgenannter erworben; Privatsammlung, Deutschland, seit 2022.

Schätzpreis:100.000€

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