Hans Hartung
Abstraction as pure gesture, from a German who fought with the Foreign Legion and lost a leg.
Hans Hartung was born in Leipzig in 1904 and was making abstract watercolours in his teens, before he had seen much abstract art. He settled in Paris in 1935, joined the French Foreign Legion in 1939, was captured, escaped, rejoined, and lost a leg in 1944; he took French citizenship after the war. His paintings are built from bundles of black or coloured strokes over luminous grounds, and are the central statement of European Art Informel, though he prepared many of them from careful studies, which complicates their reputation for spontaneity. In his last years, working from a wheelchair, he sprayed paint at enormous scale. He died at Antibes in 1989.
The 1950s and early 1960s canvases lead, with the late sprayed works of the 1980s now increasingly sought after a run of major exhibitions. The Fondation Hartung-Bergman at Antibes holds the archive and is the reference for attribution. Hartung produced a great many works on paper — ink, pastel, vinylic paint on card — and a substantial printed output in lithography and etching. Titles follow a code of letter, year and number, which is normally on the reverse and is the fastest route to identification.
If you own a work by Hans Hartung
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