About the Work
In the summer of 1935, Ernst Wilhelm Nay withdrew to the little village of Vietzkerstrand on the coast of the Baltic Sea in Pomerania. There he resumed a series of works depicting dunes and fishermen he had begun a year earlier. This drawing is an example; in it, he has depicted the fishermen as stylized, two-dimensional figures consisting merely of contours without interior detail. Simple overlapping curves form the waves of the sea. In 1958, he recalled the pathbreaking character of the workgroup: “In those pictures […], the complex of primal forms in conjunction with rhythm and dynamic turned up that would become the true formal theme of my art as a whole.” [1]
[1] Ernst Wilhelm Nay: Aufzeichnungen, 1958, in: E. W. Nay. Retrospektive / A Retrospective, Ausst.-Kat., Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle Köln 1990/91, Kunsthalle Basel 1991, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Edinburgh 1991,
Köln 1990, S. 25–38, hier S. 29.
About the Acquisition
From 1900 onwards, the Frankfurt chemist and industrialist Carl Hagemann (1867‒1940) assembled one of the most important private collections of modern art. It included numerous paintings, drawings, watercolours and prints, especially by members of the artist group “Die Brücke”. After Carl Hagemann died in an accident during the Second World War, the then Städel director Ernst Holzinger arranged for Hagemann’s heirs to evacuate his collection with the museum’s collection. In gratitude, the family donated almost all of the works on paper to the Städel Museum in 1948. Further donations and permanent loans as well as purchases of paintings and watercolours from the Hagemann estate helped to compensate for the losses the museum had suffered in 1937 as part of the Nazi’s “Degenerate Art” campaign. Today, the Hagemann Collection forms the core of the Städel museum’s Expressionist collection.
