Lot Essay
To be included in the forthcoming Hans Hartung Catalogue Raisonné being prepared by the Fondation Hans Hartung and Eva Bergman, Antibes.
Hartung emerged after the Second World War as one of the main protagonists of the Art Informel movement. Originally a German citizen, he was granted French citizenship after serving in the French Foreign Legion and from 1945 was based in Paris. Along with Wols, he thus became the principle link between the French and German abstract painters.
In 1948, the year in which the present work was created, Hartung held his first one-man show at the Galerie Lydia Conti in Paris and participated in the controversial Französische abstrakte Malerei exhibition which toured throughout Germany. This exhibition allowed both German artists and collectors to see the work of the leading French avant-garde painters at first hand and proved to have a profound influence on the future development of German abstraction. It was at the Hanover station of the exhibition, for example, that the father of the owners of this pastel first came across Hartung.
The present work is a superb demonstration of Hartung's stylistic innovation and spontaneous technique at this time. Line and gesture became the most important forces in his art. The artist would begin with a deliberately unconscious "scribble" on the paper. This would be balanced by an area of colour, which would then be counterbalanced by a further line or an expressive calligraphic gesture, and so on, until the composition was complete. As Hartung stated: "Later on, after the war, when I had enough money to buy almost as much material as I wanted, for two years I did nothing but pastels, etchings and lithographs which I made without preparation, directly on the paper, the copper or the stone. Later still, once I was used to improvising, I worked directly on the canvas, without trial, no matter what its dimensions." (in: Hans Hartung: Painting 1971-1975, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 1975 - January 1976).
The father of the present owners bought the work from the famous Stuttgart collector and psychiatrist, Dr. Ottomar Dominick. He wrote in his diary on 25 July 1949: "Dr Dominick came from Stuttgart and showed us the two Klees, which belong to the artist Theodor Werner. (...) He also showed us works by Hartung. We didn't get to see such Hartungs in the exhibition [Französische abstrakte Malerei, Hanover 1949] and what do you know, three of them remained with us! At first Dominick wanted DM700 - obviously that was too expensive for us. ... Dominick gave them to us for DM500 each. Sinfully expensive! I felt as if I was committing a crime."
Hartung emerged after the Second World War as one of the main protagonists of the Art Informel movement. Originally a German citizen, he was granted French citizenship after serving in the French Foreign Legion and from 1945 was based in Paris. Along with Wols, he thus became the principle link between the French and German abstract painters.
In 1948, the year in which the present work was created, Hartung held his first one-man show at the Galerie Lydia Conti in Paris and participated in the controversial Französische abstrakte Malerei exhibition which toured throughout Germany. This exhibition allowed both German artists and collectors to see the work of the leading French avant-garde painters at first hand and proved to have a profound influence on the future development of German abstraction. It was at the Hanover station of the exhibition, for example, that the father of the owners of this pastel first came across Hartung.
The present work is a superb demonstration of Hartung's stylistic innovation and spontaneous technique at this time. Line and gesture became the most important forces in his art. The artist would begin with a deliberately unconscious "scribble" on the paper. This would be balanced by an area of colour, which would then be counterbalanced by a further line or an expressive calligraphic gesture, and so on, until the composition was complete. As Hartung stated: "Later on, after the war, when I had enough money to buy almost as much material as I wanted, for two years I did nothing but pastels, etchings and lithographs which I made without preparation, directly on the paper, the copper or the stone. Later still, once I was used to improvising, I worked directly on the canvas, without trial, no matter what its dimensions." (in: Hans Hartung: Painting 1971-1975, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 1975 - January 1976).
The father of the present owners bought the work from the famous Stuttgart collector and psychiatrist, Dr. Ottomar Dominick. He wrote in his diary on 25 July 1949: "Dr Dominick came from Stuttgart and showed us the two Klees, which belong to the artist Theodor Werner. (...) He also showed us works by Hartung. We didn't get to see such Hartungs in the exhibition [Französische abstrakte Malerei, Hanover 1949] and what do you know, three of them remained with us! At first Dominick wanted DM700 - obviously that was too expensive for us. ... Dominick gave them to us for DM500 each. Sinfully expensive! I felt as if I was committing a crime."