Ernst Wilhelm Nay Figural - Phyllis 1950 Oil... Lot 38

Ernst Wilhelm Nay Figural - Phyllis 1950 Oil on canvas. 70 x 101 cm. Framed. Signed and dated in brown lower left 'Nay.50.'. Signed, dated and titled 'NAY - FIGURALE - Phyllis - 1950' on the reverse of the stretcher. - In good condition. Partial minimal craquelé, a tiny retouch lower right. Scheibler 495 Provenance Hauswedell & Nolte, Hamburg, auction 259, June 6-8, 1985, lot 1153; Galerie Orangerie-Reinz, Cologne; Galerie Heimeshoff, Essen 1990; private collection North Rhine-Westphalia Exhibitions Munich 1950 (Haus der Kunst), Neue Rheinische Secession Düsseldorf, cat. No. 147; Essen 1989/1990 (Galerie Heimeshoff), 25 artists on the trail of Zen 49, cat. No. 69 with color illustrations ("Figurale"); Frankfurt am Main/Leipzig 1994 (Städtische Galerie im Städel/Museum der bildenden Künste), Ernst Wilhelm Nay. The Hofheim Years, cat. No. 50 with color ill. p. 122 Literature Karl Ruhrberg, Die Malerei unseres Jahrhunderts, Düsseldorf/Vienna/New York 1987, ill. p. 293 "Figural - Phyllis" belongs to the group of so-called Fugal paintings, which marked a new beginning in his artistic oeuvre. The starting point can be seen as a stay in Worpswede, where Nay worked on a series of ten color lithographs at the invitation of the Bremen gallery owner Michael Hertz. For this printing technique, the artist had to separate his compositions into individual forms and combine them into color groups in order to reassemble them into an overall picture in the printing process of several lithographs. Nay continued this kind of formal working through in his painterly works as well. Although the Fugal Paintings appear to be non-objective, they are based on representations of people. Nay abstracted the figurative model as far as possible and translated it picture-fillingly into narrow sweeping bands, triangular and arched forms - inspired by the repetitions and inversions of a musical fugue, which gave the group of works its name. In this way he develops an independent amalgam between representationalism and abstraction. The elements of "Figurale - Phyllis", sharply contrasted by different brightness values, are dominated by a strong, cool green that meets its complementary contrast violet. Pointed angles and gentle arcs balance each other out and enter into an immensely tense but harmonious unity.