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Gallery Text

By the late 1950s and early ’60s, abstraction dominated the artistic landscape in West Germany; it was often polemically aligned with democratic principles, in opposition to the state-imposed realism of both the Nazi era and contemporary East Germany. In 1959, at the second documenta, a major exhibition of modern and contemporary art, a large painting by Nay presided over one of two main exhibition spaces, while the work of Jackson Pollock filled the other. The so-called “American invasion” by abstract expressionists that year had a lasting effect on the development of postwar German art. Although Nay omitted all figurative references from his work in the 1950s, his series of paintings from 1963–65, dubbed “Eye Pictures,” features large circular shapes rendered in distinct color contrasts.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
2003.64
People
Ernst Wilhelm Nay, German (Berlin, Germany 1902 - 1968 Cologne, Germany)
Title
Seraphim
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
painting
Date
1964
Culture
German
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/73715

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
162 x 150.7 cm (63 3/4 x 59 5/16 in.)
framed: 165.5 x 154.3 x 3.9 cm (65 3/16 x 60 3/4 x 1 9/16 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • Signed: in oil at l.r.: Nay 64.
  • label: on stretcher at u.l., printed and handwritten: HAUS DER KUNST MUNCHEN / Austellung: E. W. Nay [...]
  • label: on stretcher at u.c., printed: GALERIE BEYELER BASEL / Austellung / E. W. NAY / Seraphim, 1964 / 3.6. - 31.9.2002 / Nr. 9/WV 1100
  • label: on stretcher at l.c., printed: 41 SERAPHIM 1964 / Privatbesitz
  • label: on stretcher at c.r., printed: GALERIE MICHAEL WERNER [...]
  • inscription: on stretcher at u.l., handwritten, in artist's hand: NAY - "Seraphim" - 1964
  • inscription: on stretcher at l.r., handwritten: 288 Nay Scheibler

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Elisabeth Nay-Scheibler, by inheritance, 1964, sale, 2003.
Friends of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, purchase, 2003, gift to the Busch-Reisinger Museum, 2003.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, Gift of the Acquisitions Committee of the Friends of the Busch-Reisinger Museum on the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the Museum
Copyright
© E. Nay-Scheibler. Koln / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Accession Year
2003
Object Number
2003.64
Division
Modern and Contemporary Art
Contact
am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
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Publication History

  • Aurel Scheibler, Ernst Wilhelm Nay. Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde, DuMont (Cologne, Germany, 1990), no. 1100, col. ill. - vol. 2, p.267
  • Nay-Variationen. Retrospektive zum 100. Geburtstag, exh. cat. Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung Munich and Kunstmuseum Bonn , exh. cat., DuMont (Cologne, Germany, 2002), no. B90, col. ill.
  • Peter Nisbet and Joseph Koerner, The Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, ed. Peter Nisbet, Harvard University Art Museums and Scala Publishers Ltd. (Cambridge, MA and London, England, 2007), p. 68

Exhibition History

  • 32Q: 1200 Mid-Century Abstraction I (Painterly Abstraction), Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 04/06/2017

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Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu