Ernst Wilhelm Nay
Untitled
1956
Watercolour on paper 41.5 cm x 59.6 cm Framed under glass. Signed and dated 'Nay 56' in pencil lower right, - With a minimal light-stain and the typical signs of aging of watercolour papers used by Nay at that time.
For Ernst Wilhelm Nay the years 1955 and 1956 were defined by extraordinary successes. In 1955 he exhibited his work at the first documenta in Kassel; one year later he was represented at the Venice Biennale and celebrated his first solo exhibition in New York. That same year, the university in Freiburg commissioned him to create the so-called “Freiburger Bild”, presumably the most famous of his disc paintings. Filled with a lyrical power of imagination and creativity, our watercolour demonstrates how subtly Nay worked with the ground of his painting, how sensitively he materialised colour in space and, in doing so, how adeptly he modulated specific gravities and densities.
Certificate
We would like to thank Magdalena Claesges and Brigitte Schlüter, Ernst Wilhelm Nay-Stiftung Cologne, for kind information. The watercolour will be included in vol. III of the catalogue raisonné under the no. 56-012.
Provenance
Sylvia Henkel Collection; Lempertz, Cologne, Contemporary Art auction 758, lot 403, 12 Nov. 1999; Private collection, Rhineland