Lot Essay
The authenticity of this work has kindly been confirmed by Aurel Scheibler and will be included in the forthcoming Ernst Wilhelm Nay Catalogue Raisonné of the Works on Paper being prepared by the Estate of Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Cologne.
The present work is related to the oil painting, Dans la Campagne (Scheibler no. 395), executed by Nay in 1947 and now in the Wilhelm-Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg (illustrated).
Dans la Campagne demonstrates a knowledge of Picasso's fragmentation and belongs to Nay's seminal Hekate series, which explores a magical, mythical world of the unconscious. As Siegfried Gohr stated, "the name Hecate [an ancient Greek Goddess of the Underworld] stands for this descent into a region where the roots of all living things meet and mingle... . At the point in time when Europe and its traditions had reached their nadir, Nay invoked the forces of the unconscious, which beyond all destruction and cruelty could provide a basis for the recovery of human dignity out of a fundamental trust in oneself and one's fellow men." (In: Ex. Cat. E. W. Nay Retrospektive, Cologne 1991, pp. 36-37).
The present gouache was acquired in the late 1940s by Dr. Kurt Hentzen, a well-known landscape architect and brother of Alfred Hentzen, the celebrated German museum director who organised the first Nay retrospective at the Hanover Kestner-Gesellschaft in 1950.
The present work is related to the oil painting, Dans la Campagne (Scheibler no. 395), executed by Nay in 1947 and now in the Wilhelm-Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg (illustrated).
Dans la Campagne demonstrates a knowledge of Picasso's fragmentation and belongs to Nay's seminal Hekate series, which explores a magical, mythical world of the unconscious. As Siegfried Gohr stated, "the name Hecate [an ancient Greek Goddess of the Underworld] stands for this descent into a region where the roots of all living things meet and mingle... . At the point in time when Europe and its traditions had reached their nadir, Nay invoked the forces of the unconscious, which beyond all destruction and cruelty could provide a basis for the recovery of human dignity out of a fundamental trust in oneself and one's fellow men." (In: Ex. Cat. E. W. Nay Retrospektive, Cologne 1991, pp. 36-37).
The present gouache was acquired in the late 1940s by Dr. Kurt Hentzen, a well-known landscape architect and brother of Alfred Hentzen, the celebrated German museum director who organised the first Nay retrospective at the Hanover Kestner-Gesellschaft in 1950.