White Spring shows the German abstract painter Ernst Wilhelm Nay at the height of his powers of spontaneity and control, colouristic subtlety and compositional energy. The painting falls towards the end of his important Disk Series of 1955–63 in which round balls of colour loosen, grow and fragment. Circular forms populate the centre of White Spring, rendered with apparent speed and concentrated energy. Nay understood these as workable ‘Ur-signs’ with universal significance and free of specific personal connotations. They also hold a graphic intensity that reflected the artist’s interest in mark-making and show a movement towards the ‘eye’ forms that appear in his subsequent works. The artist originally called this painting Chrome and Grey, but later retitled it White Spring, alluding to a water source and drawing attention to the dominant white that brings the work to life.