Lot Essay
Helena I is one of the later works from Nay's celebrated Hekate series. A small and intimate portrait, it fuses much of the technical mastery of space that characterises the best of the Hekate pictures with the brighter colouring and the smoother handling of the fugal/rhythmic paintings that would, at the beginning of the 1950s, lead him away from the Hekate style.
Writing in his diary on 1 April 1948, Nay says that he was "captivated" by his first look at Helena I, hinting that the stylistic innovations of this painting not only intrigued him but had also, perhaps, taken him somewhat by surprise.
Certainly this Picasso-esque earth-mother is a particularly powerful and vibrant image that in retrospect can be seen to point both back to the "magical/mystical" world of Hekate as well as forwards to the developments with colour and spacial geometric forms that Nay made in the 1950s. Helena I is a particularly clear crystallisation of those two important strains, the "conscious" and the "primitive" that Werner Haftmann has outlined as being so central to Nay's art. "Conscious order, and the primitive instinct which makes room for those irrational elements in human nature that the Europe of today recognises as still being operative, are at the root of Nay's work. And the effect of this is that behind the well organised and precious beauty of the colour surface of Nay's pictures, magical undertones are always perceptible - a reflection from the dark realm of Hecate under whose governance Nay painted the wonderful series of pictures in the years 1946-48."
Writing in his diary on 1 April 1948, Nay says that he was "captivated" by his first look at Helena I, hinting that the stylistic innovations of this painting not only intrigued him but had also, perhaps, taken him somewhat by surprise.
Certainly this Picasso-esque earth-mother is a particularly powerful and vibrant image that in retrospect can be seen to point both back to the "magical/mystical" world of Hekate as well as forwards to the developments with colour and spacial geometric forms that Nay made in the 1950s. Helena I is a particularly clear crystallisation of those two important strains, the "conscious" and the "primitive" that Werner Haftmann has outlined as being so central to Nay's art. "Conscious order, and the primitive instinct which makes room for those irrational elements in human nature that the Europe of today recognises as still being operative, are at the root of Nay's work. And the effect of this is that behind the well organised and precious beauty of the colour surface of Nay's pictures, magical undertones are always perceptible - a reflection from the dark realm of Hecate under whose governance Nay painted the wonderful series of pictures in the years 1946-48."