Sale: 535 / Evening Sale with Collection Hermann Gerlinger, Dec. 09. 2022 in Munich Lot 48

 

48
Ernst Wilhelm Nay
Persisches Gedicht, 1949.
Oil on canvas
Estimate:
€ 180,000 / $ 194,400
Sold:
€ 350,000 / $ 378,000

(incl. surcharge)
Persisches Gedicht. 1949.
Oil on canvas.
Scheibler 469. Signed, dated and titled in lower left. Signed, dated and titled on the stretcher. 65.5 x 110 cm (25.7 x 43.3 in).

• From the series of the "Fugal Pictures".
• Colorful document of Nay's occupation with music as a key source of inspiration during this creative period.
• Balance between order and motion.
• A document of the transition from figuration to abstraction.
• From the collection Beck, Stuttgart - an acclaimed collection of world-renowned Modern Art
.

PROVENANCE: Dr. Helmut Beck, Stuttgart (1919-2001, directly from the artist).
Private collection (since 2002)
Private collection Southern Germany.

EXHIBITION: Nay - Ölbilder, Gouachen, Zeichnungen. Frankfurter Kunstkabinett Hanna Bekker vom Rath, Frankfurt am Main, June 8 - mid July 1949, cat. no. 23.
Von Nay bis Altenbourg. Meisterwerke der deutschen Nachkriegsmoderne aus einer Privatsammlung, Kunstmuseum Erfurt, June 5 - September 11, 2016 (ex. cat with illu. on p. 49).

In the relatively short period of the so-called Fugal Pictures from 1949 to 1951, Nay was able to attain intellectual clarification and find order. With the inclusion of ornaments into his artistic creation, color gained in importance, and in its aesthetic appearance it became the defining stylistic feature of this time. The values of Nay’s color constellations organize the pictorial space. This was a development that would continue in increasingly ornamentally structured surfaces of non-representational forms such as loops, lines and dots. Nay's theoretical approach is the analysis of color and surface variations, with the result that the internal structure of the color forms is increasingly abandoned, moving away from the expressive in favor of clarified, disciplined and purely chromatic color surfaces. These are framed by black or brightly colored lines, which as a whole circumscribe the composition and form color cells - a constructive principle, a balanced framework of colored areas and lines that add rhythm to the composition, both as connecting or boundary lines. Nay varies a pattern of circles and eye shapes, diamonds and tails, over contrasting monochrome or prismatic color fields. Apparently orderly, but nevertheless aimlessly, lines meander, islands of color are formed through intersections and encounters, which orderly take up the compositional balance. "Plasticity is created without creating plastic illusions”, says Nay about the constructive value of his colors. (E. W. Nay to the art historian Alfred Hentzen on May 14, 1950) With the canon of colors and forms he invented, Nay speaks to the viewer through the sound of the color like hardly any other contemporary artist, he provokes feelings, harmony or dissonance with his intuitive color compositions, which, depending on cold and warmth, on the sound and the beauty of the color’s properties, create a feeling of perfect balance.
The work "Persisches Gedicht" (Persian Poem) used to be part of the acclaimed private collection Beck, Stuttgart. The world-renowned art collection comprises all the big names of German Expressionism and Modern Art. Paul Beck laid the foundation for the collection. Born into humble circumstances in 1887, he started his own heating and plumbing company which eventually became the biggest of its kind in the state of Baden-Württemberg. Paul Beck found his way to art through literature. He made most of his acquisitions directly from the artists or their heirs. He was friends with Käthe Kollwitz and Oskar Schlemmer, and acquainted with Gerhard Marcks, Willi Baumeister and the son of August Macke. He carried out the installation of a central heating system for the residence of the family of the painter Adolf Hölzel in Stuttgart. In compensation for his service he received a good part of the artist‘s estate. When Beck‘s son Helmut inherited the collection in 1948, it had already grown to considerable size and comprised works by Wassily Kandinsky, August Macke and Alexej von Jawlensky. Helmut Beck decided to continue his father‘s collection and followed in his footsteps by pursuing a similar acquisition method: He also became close friends with many artists, among them Willi Baumeister and Ernst Wilhelm Nay, with whom he was in a close and lifelong friendship. He bought the work "Persisches Gedicht" directly from the artist.[MvL/SM]



48
Ernst Wilhelm Nay
Persisches Gedicht, 1949.
Oil on canvas
Estimate:
€ 180,000 / $ 194,400
Sold:
€ 350,000 / $ 378,000

(incl. surcharge)