Ernst Wilhelm Nay

Ernst Wilhelm Nay deftly adapted his Expressionist style to the climate of post-war abstraction, maintaining subtle and individual use of color while expressing energy with quick brushstrokes. White Spring (1963), part of his purely abstract series of oil paintings composed mainly of loose circles (“Disks” 1955-63), exemplifies his capacity for deep conceptual and expressive meaning. For Nay, the disks represented a fundamental, universal form, free of personal connotations. Color remained central to Nay’s paintings, gouaches, and drawings, as he simplified forms and cooled his palette—sometimes applying daring color combinations—to create spaceless compositions of planes in late works such as Sinus (1966). Unlike many of his peers, Nay eschewed the influence of second-generation Abstract Expressionism and the newly emerging threads of Op, Pop, and Minimalist art.