Liegende. 1943.
Gouache.
Signed and dated in lower right. On firm, off-white wove paper. 29.6 x 41.8 cm (11.6 x 16.4 in), the full sheet.
The artist made a very similar work in oil (Scheibler 316) the same year. [CH].

• Strongly colored, elaborate work with a painterly effect.
• One of the rare works created during E. W. Nay's war service in France: From 1942, the artist was stationed as cartographer in Le Mans.
• Despite the difficult circumstances, the artist's creative drive enabled him to work on drawings, watercolors and gouaches in his free time.
• The works, all of which are figurative, show tragic and melancholy, but also cheerful and optimistic scenes, which probably also reflect the artist's state of mind to a certain extent.
• The works allow observers to experience the simultaneity of both stressful and highly gratifying experiences: the threat of war, but also the beauty of the country and the love affair with a French woman are reflected in his oeuvre at the time.
• Nay's surprisingly lyrical and densely composed works of these years mark a first peak in his artistic oeuvre.
• Comparable works can be found in important museum collections, among them the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and the Hamburger Kunsthalle.

PROVENANCE: Private collection France.
Private collection France (acquired from the above in 2000).

LITERATURE: Magdalene Claesges, Ernst Wilhelm Nay. Catalogue raisonné. Aquarelle - Gouachen - Zeichnungen, vol. 1: 1919-1948, Ostfildern 2012, p. 167, no. 43-020 (color illu.).

"In his sparse free time, Nay secretly painted small watercolors, the forerunners of a cycle of gouaches and smaller oil paintings, which in their painterly density and miniature-like preciousness, express a piece of freedom in his cramped existence."
Elisabeth Nay-Scheibler, in: Aurel Scheibler, E. W. Nay. Catalogue raisonné of oil paintings, vol. I: 1922-1951, Cologne 1990, p. 198.