English
Deutsch
The exhibition in the Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection is dedicated for the first time to the artistic relationship between the French surrealist André Masson and the Berlin artist Ernst Wilhelm Nay, whose art became the figurehead of abstract modernism in post-war West Germany.
André Masson’s (1896-1987) large-format painting “Massacre”, which is the starting point of the exhibition, was created in 1931. A year later, it was published in large format by Christian Zervos in the magazine “Cahiers d’art”. On a formal level, this painting and a series of other paintings and drawings by Masson from the same period bear striking similarities to works by Ernst Wilhelm Nay (1902-1968) from the 1940s. In terms of content, Ernst Wilhelm Nay and André Masson, who never met in person, took largely opposing positions: While Masson’s works focus on the memory of the horrors of the First World War, the young soldier Nay creates a …
Continue reading the article on DEEDS.NEWS.
Image above: Ernst Wilhelm Nay. Der Besuch. 1945 – Oil on canvas, 50 x 81 cm, privately owned. Photo: Ernst Wilhelm Nay Foundation, Cologne
