Ernst Wilhelm Nay - Frau mit Hahn - image-1

Lot 603 D

Ernst Wilhelm Nay - Frau mit Hahn

Auction 1060 - overview Cologne
28.11.2015, 11:00 - Contemporary Art
Estimate: 60.000 € - 80.000 €
Result: 74.400 € (incl. premium)

Ernst Wilhelm Nay

Frau mit Hahn
1948/1949

Oil on canvas. 32 x 49.7 cm. Framed. Signed and dated 'Nay. 48'. Signed, dated and titled 'Nay Frau mit Hahn 1949' verso on stretcher.

During his deployment in the first half of the 1940s Ernst Wilhelm Nay was only able to paint in secret and sporadically, and alongside drawings and gouaches he only produced a moderate amount of painterly work, already showing a strong abstracted pictorial language. The end of the Second World War therefore meant a veritable liberation for the artist. His home in Berlin had been bombed so he settled in Hofheim in Taunus with friends and began working in an empty studio house. In the following years he developed an oeuvre transposing his war experiences and his situation in life in a ravaged land into intensely coloured, largely abstract illustrations. This group of works from 1945 to 1948 came to be known as the 'Hekate pictures', the name derived from the picture title 'Tochter der Hekate I' (Hekate's Daughter I), from 1945 (Scheibler 337) and 'Tochter der Hekate II' from 1946 (Scheibler 366). Both works could in fact be considered exemplary of the characteristics of the artistic era: ''In all eras of Nay's work the recurring transformtion of the form vocabulary of circle shapes, spindle, chessboard and hand shapes is visibly woven into encrypted figural and landscape associations in the Hekate pictures. Eruptive or restrained, impasto in darker or pastel-coloured chromatics, the Hekate pictures reflect the tragedy and emerging hopes of the postwar period. In their artistic mastery they simultaenously dissolve all distress.'' (Elisabeth Nay-Scheibler, Die Hekate-Bilder 1945-1948, in: Aurel Scheibler, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Werkverzeichnis der Ölgemälde, vol. I, 1922-1951, Cologne 1990, p. 224).

The 'Frau mit Hahn' from the title is only present in single pictograms in the composition. The pair of eyes, one of the woman's hands as well as the open beak and the spread plumage of the cockerel can be identified. The colour scheme is limited as far as possible to the primary colours of yellow, red, blue and green, partly mixed with white; in addition, areas of black and energetically applied white contours divide up the picture surface. 'Frau mit Hahn' and later pictures from the group of works already indicate the artistic development towards a stronger, clearly contoured fragmentation of the picture surface, which would shape the working years to follow.

Catalogue Raisonné

Scheibler 453

Certificate

Galerie Heseler, Munich 1987; private collection, Rhineland

Provenance

Cologne 1954 (Galerie Der Spiegel), Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Bilder, Gouachen, Aquarelle und Zeichnungen von 1927-1954, exhib.cat.no.11