Hans Hartung – Artworks & Biography

However, besides the force of nature, another cosmic power hit him like a bolt of lightning: love. His marriage to Anna-Eva Bergman began in 1929 with a coup de foudre, as she herself recounted in an interview. The English expression – love at first sight – symbolises lightning strike.

The active observation of the self- evident gesture of old masters reveals the essence of his inspiration. However, Hans Hartung radically changes the point of view. He is not interested in the overall represen- tation, but in the abstraction of the detailed section – especially the significance of the individual stroke.

When looking at the mother‘s sleeve in the right half of Rembrandt‘s 1668 painting, it is depicted in such an abstract manner, that can only be recognized in the context of the scene.The balloon sleeve consists of oil paint, applied rhythmically and in spots, evoking the materiality, transparency and movement of the dress.Viewed in detail, it looks like an abstract dynamic surface that can certainly be compared to thestructures in Hartung‘s works.

The harmony, dynamics and impulsive arbitrariness of Vincent van Gogh‘s painting style can also be compared with Hartung‘s gestural painting style. In van Gogh‘s depiction of nature, colour becomes an independent pictorial element. From the turmoil of the different strokes, an energetic balance emerges in the overall picture.

Hartung set himself the goal of developing precisely thisdetermination in his movements.
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"I was gripped by the human expressivity of the stroke. The expression in the stroke.All the humanity is in there, and then I latched onto that."
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The stroke is the result of a gesture. Hans Hartung paints with vehement physical effort. It comes to the expression of agire sur toile – to act on the canvas –a method that bristles up with speed, automatism, power and the highest concentration. The size of the canvas becomesa mirror of the human dimension, the grandeur humaine.

Already as a young artist, Hans Hartung left behind the naturalistic reproduction of the world. Very early he thinks and paints not only through abstracting, but also objectless. He wants to recognize the core and the structures. In his paintings the non-material manifests itself. The connections between the microcosm andthe macrocosm find their artistic expression.

"Since my earliest youth, I was fascinated by astrono- my and physical structures.What impressed me most was the similarity between the big and the small. The cosmos is our galaxy, our galaxy is the Earth, the Earth is human.Human is the atoms. Atoms make up the human brain."

In this holistic system there are no limits. Neither in the spheres of time, matter or space. This is also reflected in the alphanumeric titles the artist gives his works: Far from concrete designations, they represent an open space for interpretations of meaning. The titles do not follow a precise definition and do not prescribe any impressions for us as viewers.

At the same time, the automated codes are reminiscent of media and digitalization, which gives generations of young artists a sense of contemporary relevance. No concept, no recognizable form limiting the aesthetic freedom.

firmament, noun
the sky
firmamentum =
the sky fixed above the earth (late Latin)
OXFORD DICTIONARY

Looking at a work by Hans Hartung over and over again, enables us to broaden our horizons and to look beyond our intellectual firmament. Such an aesthetic experience thus favors an expansion of our consciousness.

In Hans Hartung‘s abstraction, a universal dimension of dualistic creative forces can be recognized, which relate to each other in seemingly lyrical movement. Energy condenses into matter and matter dissolves into energy. Both appear as metamorphoses. The artist becomes an alchemist.

Human impulses and deeply rooted sensations are part of such ways of looking at things. The subjective and the emotional are expressed in the rhythm and form of the colour application. Through the forced spontaneity and the quick, vehement use of the body, when it engages in the act of painting, intellectual control is switched off. The picture becomes a psychogram of the momentary mental state, which changes continuously.

Hartung studies and explores the autonomous movements of his body and the meaning of the free gesture. He intends to make this kinesthetic determination visible on the surface: he expresses his bundled energies through superimposed planes and powerful lines – completely undogmatic towards his own style, but with regard to the lyrical quality.

"All kinds of reactions exist within us. I thinkthat our being has the right to be formulated. Everything has the right to speech."
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He gains unconscious, yet emotional, control over physique and mind. The direct connection of psyche and artwork automatically leads to change.

Even as a young student, Hans Hartung found a new, radical direction: the non- objective. Lines and spots, blur and freedom. However, he rejects the dogmatic claim to truth, wants no doctrine, no rigid system.
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"I cannot learn to think in triangles."
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Constructivist painting of the Bauhaus, which was respectedin its time, seemed too geometric and cold for him. Constantly searching for tactile truth, gesture becomes the instrument of his expression. Living nature and not mathematical geometry remains the sphere of his creativity. An avid photographer, he discovers structures of plants, rocks and light. From 1970 he lives and works in his villa in Antibes, in the middle of an olive grove.

The imitation of nature has been the main goal of art since ancient times. The more realistic the representation succeeded, the higher the artistic quality was rated. Modernism, starting with Impressionism, gradually moved away from this, but retained the figurative motifs.

William Turner, an observer of nature, succeeds in a metamorphic development: According to art theorist Werner Busch, Turner‘s close study of nature unfolds from sketch to landscape, but is rendered less and less idealized over time. The method of his painting evolves into “a wholly subjective production process controlled solely by bodily motor.“ The representational gradually recedes before the captured mood of a scene.
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Another interpreter of natural events, Caspar David Friedrich, knows how to atmospherically capture fog and the relationship between the sky and the horizon. He uses two thirds of his picture surface for the spread of bound- less distance. With soft colour gradients merging into one another, he creates a diffusely engaging and somber atmosphere. The looming wall of fog can be interpreted as a portal into another sphere and as an allegory of death.

Hans Hartung‘s predecessors created an awareness for a no longer purely mimetic reproduction of the reality that surrounds us. By alienating the familiar, they created important preconditions for abstraction.
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Hartung‘s courage for complete non-objectivity enables new levels of consciousness. His paintings give us a sense of freedom, they open up new perspectives and expand the boundaries of all our sensations.

The late work of a master is the quin- tessence of his aesthetic and inventive abilities. Michelangelo painted the last frescoes in the Vatican at the age of 89, and Rembrandt‘s late paintings are a mystery.Hans Hartung was 85 years old when he created this brilliant work, the year of his death. The explosive density of shapes and colours captures the irrepressible power of creation. A big bang of sparkling light and cosmic impenetrability. The atmosphere of the creation of such essential works is described by Hans Hartung himself:

″I'm a night person. When dusk falls, I get the urge to improvise. I abandon myself to instinctive painting.It is the night that inspires me.The bright studio surrounded by darkness becomes a cell that has a life of its own.Thinking becomes more intense and aggressive in this silence that seems to be attentive and makes you see time still.″

Darkness, inspiration, concentra- tion, silence, supratemporality..., stand for the deepest of all spheres: the mind. The cosmic fireworks of the painting emerge from this contemplative being- in-itself. It was part of the major retrospective of Hans Hartung‘swork at the Musée d‘Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris 2019/20.
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Hans Hartung died on December 7th, 1989. Before that, he was awarded the Order Grand Officer de la Legion d‘Honneur by the French President in Paris and visited a Rembrandt exhibition at the Louvre – the circle is closed. His ashes are scattered in the Mediterranean and he now belongs to the harmony of nature. Quintessence is what Aristotle called the fifth element. Besides the known basic elements earth, fire, air and water, this is the beyond of the moon sphere, he called it ether.
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It is the sphere of the unchangeable, intelligent, eternal.