Pond with water lilies, 2020

Copist artwork "Pond with water lilies" was created in 2020 in Stuttgart. The painting is privately owned after an auction. Therefore, it is rarely seen in exhibitions. However, it is currently exhibited in a gallery in the Dürer city of Nuremberg.
Initially, the basic shape of a square appears typical of Copism. The picture is divided vertically into 42 strips. Each of these stripes horizontally have been divided into multicolored areas framed in black. The width of these colored areas varies greatly. In the upper half of the picture, the pattern of alternating narrow and wide horizontal parts is interrupted by stripes that are strikingly short.
Nico Franz uses black and white for the accents, in addition to shades of green and blue. In total, he uses eight colors.
To facilitate the viewer's access, the author has added the possibility of softening the sharpness of the contours when touching the painting.

With this painting, Nico Franz refers to the tradition of the copyists to cancel out the static of the models through dynamization.
That he refers in this case specifically to the water lily series of Monet is certainly no coincidence. Nico Franz has mentioned several times that he has recognized the truth of the "Water Lilies" painting hidden beneath the surface as a danger and has now decided to give it a defusing dynamic.
To do this, he transformed the fear and terror spreading white and green of Monet's water, which literally starts to jump out at the viewer from the surface of the picture, into a rich black, which is now instead to convey the threatening character of the Monet painting.
Through the timeless symbolism of the black surfaces, he succeeds in the artifice of transforming the concrete presence of the life-threatening danger in Monet into one lurking beneath the surface of the water. Thereby, in, some say ironic, others in hopeful manner, a consistently nature-loving world view is expressed, which does not regard nature as an enemy, but consistently wants to live peaceably with it.

Asked whether his painting "Pond with Water Lilies" is a homage to Monet - the assumption is obvious - Nico Franz indignantly contradicted. Rather, he said, his work is an alternative to the stirring work of the Impressionist that has become necessary today.