“Anyone who views Nay’s paintings feels stirred and moved by the power of an immediate appearance that is dynamic in and of itself [...]” These are the words the renowned art historian and early proponent of modern art criticism Max Imdahl once used to describe the impact of Ernst Wilhelm Nay’s paintings (Max Imdahl, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Stuttgart 1962, p. 5). What ultimately unfolds before the viewer’s eyes as an apparition results from an extraordinary artistic achievement and a nuanced interplay of color, form, and painting technique. This present work, “Gelb und Silbergrau” (Yellow and Silver-Gray) from 1961, conveys this experience with particular intensity.

The dense juxtaposition and superimposition of the disc-like forms that are so characteristic of Nay, the famous pinnacle of his abstraction, result in this impressive portrait format, where dark shades of gray and black intersect with a few bright yellow accents. The pronounced, almost dramatic chiaroscuro contrast lends the freely composed pictorial space a dynamic order in which the seemingly weightless circular forms appear to float between surface and space.
Nay thus combines color and form to create a liberated and extraordinarily vibrant interplay of shifting forces, which Max Imdahl so aptly describes as “a choreography of color harmony, space, and surface” (Max Imdahl, op. cit., p. 16).

In the very year it was created, “Gelb und Silbergrau” featured in a major retrospective exhibition in Pittsburgh alongside works by Josef Albers, Robert Motherwell, and Mark Rothko. Only a year later, the New York gallery Knoedler dedicated a solo exhibition to the German artist; a few years later, the painting eventually found its way into a private collection in Pittsburgh through the gallery. “Gelb und Silbergrau” is representative of the emerging international appreciation for Nay’s now-famous “Disc Paintings" which continue to make a powerful impression with their distinctive, effective visual language and timeless dramatic composition. [AR]