Ernst Wilhelm Nay is one of the most important post-war artists in Germany and is considered a pioneer of abstract painting. His oeuvre is divided into a succession of different creative phases, some of differ quite strongly from one another. It is fascinating to observe the clarity and stringency with which the artist understood his work as an organic cosmos, in which becoming and growing, rhythm and dynamics, are among the essential driving forces. In 1963, Ernst Wilhelm Nay began to develop his previously conceived motifs of the Disk Pictures and attained a series of works he titled “Augenbilder” (Eye Pictures), which would make for an apex in Nay's oeuvre. He showed a total of nine monumental paintings from the series in the extremely important exhibition documenta III. In the “Eye Pictures” he covered the disks with pointed, oval shapes to which he adds a dark dot in the center, creating the image of an eye. Hence Nay addresses the traditional theme of observing and being observed and reverses the viewing situation. Elisabeth Nay-Scheibler describes the works as a "newly won painterly freedom employed with a great spirit" (quoted from: Museum Ludwig, Cologne (ed.), Ernst Wilhelm Nay. Catalogue raisonné of oil paintings, volume II 1952-1968, Cologne 1990, p. 238). In this sense, the present work also testifies to exactly this painterly freedom and to the vitality of the composition. What is particularly appealing about this work are the strong contrasts of the primary colors red, blue, and yellow, the play of delicate, lucid colors with their dark-colored contrasts, and the juxtaposition of prominently placed eye forms and gestural abstraction. "With the Eye Pictures, Nay opened up the view into the cosmos, to phenomena previously intended by the analogy to music. His color, guided by the both haunting and simple sign of the eyes, explores hitherto unknown realms and gains an undreamed of radiance. The frequently used primary colors of the Eye Pictures allow the painting to extend the pictorial body into infinity. What had already been alluded to in the symbolic-magical paintings, now becomes a view into the cosmos of painting, which, in turn, reverberates into the observer’s space. Since the Disk Pictures, the leitmotif of front and back of the pictorial structure have been interpreted as a means to look into the space and the waft these qualities exert on the viewer [..]." (quoted from: Siegfried Gohr, Einführung in das Werk von E. W. Nay, in: Scheibler Vol. 1, p. 23). At the same time, "Morningstar" is a very personal painting, as the artist gave it to Harry Brooks, director of Knoedler Gallery, and his wife as a wedding gift. The previous year, Nay had had a major solo exhibition at the famous New York gallery. [SM]