Lot 168 | Ernst Wilhelm Nay | "Mit fünf weißen Sternen"

NAY, ERNST WILHELM
1902 Berlin - 1968 Cologne

Title: "Mit fünf weißen Sternen".
Date: 1955.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Measurement: 125 x 200,5cm.
Notation: Signed and dated lower right: Nay. 55. Additionally signed, titled and dated verso top of the stretcher: NAY - mit 5 weissen STERNEN- 1955. Signed again verso lower left: NAY.
Frame/Pedestal: Studio bar.

Provenance:
- Estate of E.W. Nay / Elisabeth Nay-Scheibler, Cologne
- Bayer AG, Leverkusen (acquired in 1984)

Exhibitions:
- Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover 1955
- Galerie Günther Franke, Munich 1955, cat. no. 2
- Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum/Westdeutscher Künstlerbund, Hagen 1955
- Kunsthalle Basel 1960, cat. no. 114
- Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin 2013
- Bayer Erholungshaus, Leverkusen 2016/17

Literature:
- Ernst Wilhelm Nay Stiftung (ed.): Werkverzeichnis - www.nay.aps-info.de, cat. rais. no. CR 759 (last accessed 10th January 2025)
- Scheibler, Aurel: Ernst Wilhelm Nay - Werkverzeichnis der Ölgemälde, vol. II 1952-1968, Cologne 1990, cat. rais. no. 759, fig.
- Exhib. cat. Gemälde, Aquarell, Zeichnungen, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover 1955, cat. no. 27
- Exhib. cat. Westdeutsche Kunst 1945-1955, Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum/Westdeutscher Künstlerbund, Hagen 1955, cat. no. 149, fig.
- Farbenfabriken Bayer (ed.): Kunstwerk - Bildende Kunst bei Bayer, Leverkusen 1992, p. 80, fig.
- Exhib. cat. From Beckmann to Warhol, Art of the 20th and 21st Centuries - The Bayer Collection, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Cologne 2013, p. 143, fig.
- Ernst Wilhelm Nay Stiftung (ed.): Ernst Wilhelm Nay und die Moderne, vol. 1, Cologne 2020, p. 81, fig.


- Analogy of pictorial and outer space made visible by the five "stars"
- An example for the "arithmetical examples", which Nay creates to balance the relation between colours and surface as well as room perfectly
- Irresistible dynamics from right to left, emphasized against the usual reading direction of images, contrasted by the white "stars" and dark circles