Lot 281 D

This watercolour occupies an important place in Ernst Wilhelm Nay's oeuvre. He is able to convey vitality, independence and spontaneity to an extent that is rare in this technique. In the words of Jean Cassou, with the watercolour “the artist returned back to his very first efforts towards the purely elemental.” (Jean Cassou, Nay-Aquarelle, Cologne 1969, p. 12).
Nay's musical abstractions and improvisations of the 1950s eliminate almost every trace of representationalism, and they unquestionably represent a highlight in his rich body of work. Indeed, falling directly in the period of his transition to the phase of the disc paintings, which began in 1955, our boldly colourful composition from 1954 marks one of the most interesting moments in the artist's oeuvre. The composition is structured through sweeping black lines, expressive paths of force and chains of drips, while the choreography of the fields of colour, which would develop into a pure chromatic resonance in the disc paintings, plays out all around them. Viewers' eyes are drawn along the curves and lines, thus conveying a fluid rhythm that is simultaneously full of tonal contrasts and spatial openness.