Fishermen Setting Sail, 1937

About the Work

“I greatly benefit […] from living in nature and participating in the elementary life of the fishermen”, wrote Ernst Wilhelm Nay of his trip to Vietzkerstrand in Pomerania in 1936. Inspired by his sojourns there during the summer, he had begun to paint seascapes. Nay translated the dynamic of the sea into sharply contrasting fields of colour and thereby encountered “the effectively formal theme” of his art. Nay’s art, ostracized by the National Socialists, marks the transition to nonrepresentational art after the war.