Sale: 540 / Evening Sale, June 09. 2023 in Munich Lot 11

 

11
Ernst Wilhelm Nay
Pferdeköpfe, 1948.
Oil on canvas
Estimate:
€ 100,000 / $ 110,000
Sold:
€ 203,200 / $ 223,520

(incl. surcharge)
Pferdeköpfe. 1948.
Oil on canvas.
Scheibler 429. Signed and dated in lower left. Once more signed and dated on the reverse. 55 x 70.5 cm (21.6 x 27.7 in).
In context of the preesent work, the artist also made the a gouache of the same name (Claesges 48-183.1) and several pencil drawings (Claesges 48-182 to 48-192).

• Part of a German private collection for more than 50 years.
• From the series of the "Hekate Pictures" that marked the transition from figuration to abstraction.
•The year the work was made, Nay took part in the 24th Venice Biennale wit a similar "Hekate" picture from 1948.
• Nay conceived a pictorial portfolio including small circular shapes that would become so characteristic of his later "Disk" and "Eye" pictures.
• Similar works from the same year of origin are in important museums like the Nationalgalerie Berlin, the Bavarian State Painting Collection, Munich, the Kunsthalle Hamburg, the Sprengel Museum, Hanover, and the Museum Wiesbaden
.

PROVENANCE: Elly Nay, Berlin.
Galerie Franz, Berlin (1950).
Carl Stahl Collection, Berlin.
Frankfurter Kunstkabinett Hanna Bekker vom Rath, Frankfurt a. Main (acquired from the above, presumably in 1968, Galerie Gerda Bassenge, Berlin).
Private collection Hesse (acquired from the above in 1969).

EXHIBITION: Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Galerie Günther Franke, München, October 1 - November 1948, cat. no. 18 (leaflet).
E. W. Nay - Fritz Winter. Abstrakte Malerei, Städtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim, January 8 - February 6, 1949.
Neue Bilder von Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Galerie Alex Vömel, Kunstkabinett Hans Trojanski, Düsseldorf, June 1949 (titled "Tierköpfe").
Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Galerie Franz, Berlin, June/July 1950, cat. no. 15 (leaflet).
Gemälde, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Druckgraphik und Plastik des XX. Jahrhunderts (12th catalog), Frankfurter Kunstkabinett Hanna Bekker vom Rath, Frankfurt a. M., May 16 – June 28. 1969, cat. no. 87 (with full-page color illu., titled "Komposition", with the gallery label on the stretcher).

LITERATURE: Galerie Gerda Bassenge, Berlin, 12th auction, 1968, lot 1513 (with illu., p. 209, titled "Komposition").
Aurel Scheibler, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, vol. 1, Cologne 1990, cat. no. 429 (with color illu.).
Magdalene Claesges (-Bette), Die Geburt des Elementaren Bildes aus dem Geist der Abstraktion. Versuch einer Deutung der theoretischen Schriften von Ernst Wilhelm Nay (diss.), Cologne 2001, p. 67 (footnote, no. 213).
Friedrich Weltzien, E. W. Nay - Figur und Körperbild. Kunst und Kunsttheorie der vierziger Jahre, Berlin 2003, p. 252.
"Some want to have it the easy way by asking for resemblance to nature, others by demanding pure abstraction. But it is only this range that reveals the true value of the work of art."
E. W. Nay, speech of June 5, 1946, quoted from: Magdalene Claesges, E. W. Nay. Werkverzeichnis d. Aquarelle, Gouachen, Zeichnungen, vol. 1, Ostfildern 2012, p. 11.

After the end of the war, E. W. Nay settled in Hofheim am Taunus, where he moved into a small house with a studio which he had found through the agency of the gallery owner Hanna Bekker vom Rath. He made contact with museums, artists and the art trade and gradually was able to build on his earlier successes through exhibitions at important galleries such as Günther Franke in Munich, Gerd Rosen in Berlin and Galerie Vömel in Düsseldorf, as well as at the Kunstverein Hamburg. At the same time, he also continued to develop his artistic agenda. In his own words, Nay painted almost "furiously" (E. W. Nay, quoted from: Magdalene Claesges, E. W. Nay. Werkverzeichnis d. Aquarelle, Gouachen, Zeichnungen, vol. 1, Ostfildern 2012, p. 10) in these years and developed new, very strong formal ideas. In the "Hekate" pictures - with which he also participated in the Venice Biennale in 1948, the year this painting was created, Nay applied the colors in impasto manner and thus creates a lively surface structure with a strong haptic appeal.

He began to conceive arrangement and structure of the pictorial elements much more freely, with a stronger rhythm and dynamics, and the highly abstract motifs for which he found inspiration in nature, were fanned out into expressive, angular, round, linear and flat elements and, like through a kaleidoscope, make up a legible and fascinating composition. His intensive search for the perfect relationship between representationalism and abstraction, which can be observed from the very beginning of his artistic work, saw its climax in the "Hekate" paintings. "What is certain is that there is no other work phase in Nay's oeuvre that is characterized by such a pronounced [..] tension between recognizable figurative motifs and an almost entirely abstract design." (Magdalene Claesges, quoted from: ibid. p. 11 ) [CH]



11
Ernst Wilhelm Nay
Pferdeköpfe, 1948.
Oil on canvas
Estimate:
€ 100,000 / $ 110,000
Sold:
€ 203,200 / $ 223,520

(incl. surcharge)