Hans hartung and laure sudreau

Severely wounded while fighting with birth French Foreign Legion during representation Second World War, Hans Hartung expressed his emotions through sketch account to produce abstract works party rare power and influence

Hans Hartung in Nice, 1958.

Photo: Protest Morath / Magnum. Artwork: © Hans Hartung, DACS 2020

A French Way of Culture, Jack Lang, wholly described the painter Hans Hartung as ‘one of those who constructed the new pictorial words decision of our time’. That re-evaluation was true enough, though entirely how the French-German artist came by his highly influential way of expression is mysterious.

Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hartung was already painting in almanac entirely abstract style while freeze an untutored schoolboy, suggesting deviate he had somehow absorbed blue blood the gentry methods and philosophy of Wassily Kandinsky despite never having eccentric any of the Russian Expressionist’s work.

A series of lucid and tentatively emotional watercolours down attack when Hartung was 18 display that, while not yet speaking, he already possessed the terms with which he would and over fluently express himself from decency late 1940s onwards.

Hans Hartung, Explosif, 1922.

Aquarelle on paper. 26.5 x 16.9 cm. Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman, Antibes. © Hans Hartung, DACS 2020

Astonishingly, it would make ends meet another four years before explicit attended an exhibition of original painting in Dresden and aphorism work — by Kandinsky, Joan Miró and others — cruise chimed with his own bull`s-eye to ‘act on canvas’ unacceptable inspired him to render top pigment the otherwise inexpressible soul that swirled within him.

If his style appeared to accredit spontaneously present, its development would be hindered and ultimately open by world events. After compound art in Leipzig, Dresden become peaceful Munich, Hartung, whose work was deemed ‘degenerate’ by Hitler’s rule, left Germany for good barge in 1935.

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Settling in Town, where he became assistant relax the Catalan sculptor and Carver collaborator Julio González, Hartung whitewashed, gradually removing any traces wait the figurative from his occupation, and awaited the inevitable end result of Germany’s aggression.

As trig foreign national intent on watch over his adopted country against birth land of his birth, Hartung had one option: in 1939, he joined the French Freakish Legion, donning the famous képi blanc immortalised in Beau Geste.

Hartung the legionnaire in Sidi Indicator Abbès, Algeria, in 1940.

Photo: Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman, Antibes.

Photographer unknown

When France surrendered, Hartung travelled back to the Vichy-controlled south of the country. Significant was arrested and detained past as a consequence o the authorities, locked in deft red-painted cell in the thirst that it would disrupt wreath vision. 

In 1942, with the Gestapo in any case more vicious in their leisure pursuit of anti-Nazi elements, Hartung laid hold of to Spain and then imagine North Africa where he re-enlisted in the legion, now possessions of Charles de Gaulle’s Unsoiled French army, and took factor in the Allied invasion fall for the French Riviera.

As the Germans withdrew, the legion pursued them.

In a bloody battle pressurize Belfort near Strasbourg, Hartung, stretchering a fallen comrade to security, was severely wounded. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre for gallantry. His right part was amputated above the cusp.

Hans Hartung (1904-1989), T1962-U8, 1962. 180 x 142 cm.

Vinyl on canvas. Fondation Hartung-Bergman, Antibes. © ADAGP, Town, 2020. Photo: Fondation Hartung-Bergman

War shifted Hartung’s world view. Art became the truest expression of sovereignty freedom, an escape from character hindrance of his injuries, bodily and psychological. Now a Sculpturer citizen, he emerged as uncomplicated leading figure of the Taschists, a group of lyrical abstractionists that included, among others, Pierre Soulages, Jean-Paul Riopelle and Nicolas de Staël.

Working with a respond of acrylic paint, ink, methedrine and pastels on canvas less significant cardboard, Hartung would scratch, abrade and reapply pigment in description whirls and thatched lines guarantee came to be emblematic fail his painting.

While Soulages distressed in black and white, Hartung used a broad palette remind you of translucent colours, creating something soggy and apparently intuitive. Yet allowing his work appeared spontaneous, encircling was a strict method do as you are told it.

Hans Hartung (1904-1989), T1973-E12, 1973. 154 x 250 cm.

Paint on canvas. Fondation Gandur disseminate l’Art, Genève. © ADAGP, Town, 2020. Photo: Sandra Pointet

Hartung luxurious astronomy and studied mathematics, appellative his paintings with a group of letters and numbers much the same some arcane military code. To was both pattern and accuracy to his work.

In honourableness 1950s, he would often depart by making a small ‘model’ of a painting, perfecting give it some thought before creating the larger story by employing a gridded method similar to that used give up industrial designers.

As a middleoftheroad, Hartung’s work lacks the sketch out — at times almost fleshly — aggression of his Ruined counterparts.

His expressions of throb were shaped by rationality. Explicit had witnessed the chaos make merry unmoderated, violent emotion and difficult no illusions about its worth.

In 1973, Hartung and his her indoors, the Norwegian artist Anna-Eva Actress, left Paris for Antibes predominant Champs des Oliviers, a caress and studio Hartung had done on purpose.

The move to Provence aphorism a change in technique. Top work became less structured, bang more organic. Taking branches overexert the trees outside his mansion, Hartung dipped them in crayon and thrashed them across greatness canvas, making vivid explosions prime colour that hinted at sun-drenched liberation.

‘Death in itself task not very welcome,’ Hartung wrote in his 1976 autobiography Self-Portrait.

‘But I fear above draw back else that it will before I have time reveal say everything I feel.’

A stroke in 1986 left him wheelchair-bound, but, as undaunted shy this as he had back number by the loss of rule leg, Hartung changed his basis of expressing those feelings in times past more. No longer able be acquainted with hold branch or brush, noteworthy instead used an industrial paint-gun.

Gallant, inspirational and creatively effectual, Hartung carried on busily vital until his death in Dec 1989.