| Ernst
Wilhelm Nay, German (1902 - 1968)
Ernst W. Nay was a colourist. He thought
through colour and translated his concepts through the
use of colour. After the Second World War he
used colour to move beyond figurative painting. “Colour,
as an artistic value which needs to be conceived
with the spirit, is so immeasurable, so unpredictable”,
the artist summed up six months before his death, “that
any painter who conceives starting unequivocally
from colour is forced to re-classify colour from
his own point of view in a new system, and to
express himself on the basis of that system”.
Nay hoped to obtain an objective validation with
his chromatic system, as this not only should
not be a closed system, but should also attempt
to be in line with the intellectual trends of
his time. He himself related his concept of an
anti-illusionist, colourist painting to Jean
Gebser’s outline of an non-perspective
image of the world, which requires a new level
of conscience, evocable through the medium of
painting. The second important point of reference
for Nay was the surface, because colour can only
be laid on a surface: “Thus, colour becomes
a configurative value and, at the same time,
also the configurative colour becomes the configurative
value of the surface”. Colour and surface,
the two cornerstones of Nay’s optical theory,
constitute the basis of the so-called “system
of disks”. It was based on punctual disks,
that is, of colour, with which Nay attempted
to develop a “syntactic technique” of
colour, independent from Nature and Natural Sciences.
For this, first he placed on the surface of the
painting various sets of disks of the same colour.
Then, he filled chromatically the space between
them, that is, the negative shape of the subject.
In this way, he created a pictorial space in
which he integrated rhythm, without the three-dimensional
quality of depth. Nay spoke of “flat space”.
This is a characteristic of the set of works
entitled Scheibenbilder (Paintings with disks)
(1954–1963), in which the disk and the
variations of it constitute the leitmotiv. In
spite of the systematisation of the structure
of the painting, the juxtaposition of the colours
does not follow any particular logic. Nay tried
to dispose the shades in a deliberately “a-causal” manner.
His chromatic scale, therefore, was not the expression
of emotional states. Even in his reduction to
a maximum of 14 colours, he offered an infinite
variety of combinations.
Nay’s paintings were created in the
moment in which they were painted, often without
interruption. For that reason, there are no
preparatory studies or sketches. On the other
hand, the artist worked by producing series.
In the large “Plateau-Serien” he
elaborated subjects, while in the empirical
series he developed individual complexes in
greater depth. In contrast with the Scheibenbilder,
in which the structure is relatively solid,
in this painting the order is decomposed in
irregular coloured shapes. The circular disk
loses its contour, it becomes a stain or surface.
The polychrome pictorial shapes merge without
shadows or modelling. They cross and complement
each other. There is no background against
which they can stand out. Everything, even
the shading, wants to be a configured surface.
With its quick brushstroke, Nay spread on this
vertical composition his palette of colours
characteristic of the end of the 1950s. The
artist, who preferred cold colours, accentuated
the bottom right-hand corner with a set of
various shades of blue and black, which find
their counterpoint in the bright white. The
two formal motifs painted in bright lemon yellow
in the top and bottom edges of the painting
accentuate further the composition. The chromatic
disposition of the colours on both sides of
the dark area emphasise this effect. The bottom
left-hand corner and the top half of the painting
are dominated by the colours yellow, orange
and ochre. The tension created by warm and
cold colours, and light and dark shades, gives
dynamism to the chromatic composition. The “absolute
form” and the “pure vital force” are
gathered in this painting. According to the
artist, that is how the true meaning of his
art is achieved.
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