Ernst Wilhelm Nay

Ernst Wilhelm Nay Light and darkness 1953 Oil on canvas. 100 x 110.5 cm. Framed. Signed and dated 'Nay.53.' in black lower left. Signed, dated and titled 'NAY - "Light and Dark" - 1953 -' on the reverse of the stretcher, numbered '2' on the reverse of the canvas. - In freshly colored condition. With small retouches, partial minimal craquelé. Scheibler 689 (with erroneous measurements 100 x 120 cm). Provenance Galerie Springer, Berlin; private property Berlin; Villa Grisebach, Berlin, auction 15, Selected Works of Art, November 23, 1990, lot 84, private collection North Rhine-Westphalia Exhibitions Berlin 1954 (Springer Gallery), E.W. Nay, Cat.No. 2 "In rhythm we experience the realization of the pictorial form. It raises the pictorial activity out of the interpretation, the idealizing, subjective world of feeling. In it the universal is formed. In the rhythms as well as in the colors opposites appear, which lead to tension and movement. They determine the dynamic character of the picture," wrote Ernst Wilhelm Nay in 1955 in his treatise "Vom Gestaltwert der Farbe - Fläche, Zahl und Rhythmus" (quoted from: E.W. Nay. Reader. Selbstzeugnisse und Schriften, Cologne 2002, p. 124). The series of works of the Rhythmic Paintings, which were created starting in 1952 after the artist moved from the Taunus region to the big city of Cologne, is characterized by movement and dynamics; the rhythm of music, which the artist received intensively, the lively big city, and his work on a woodcut series were Nay's decisive sources of inspiration in the early 1950s. He transferred them directly into an abstract, playful-looking visual language in which jagged lines taken from the woodcut are combined with loosely placed areas of color. With its weightless, well-balanced play of colors, "Light and Dark" from 1953 is exemplary for this creative period marked by departure. The lines, which form a solidifying framework in paintings created at the same time, are pushed back to delicate fragments in this work and set the stage for the color chords floating against a light background.