Hans HARTUNG
(1904-1989)
The gesture sniper
“I seek to capture the moment when the form emerges.”
Why is it fascinating?
Hartung is the painting of dazzling lines, sharp movements, and immediate emotion. A style based on gesture, speed, and controlled chance. It's pure rhythm.
He doesn't draw, he strikes the canvas with lightning. Scraping, spraying, projecting, he invents a visual vocabulary where the trace becomes emotion. To do this, he uses everything: paintbrushes, brushes, combs, garden tools, tree branches...
His works, often in black on a luminous background, evoke inner storms and existential tensions.
A very contemporary work
Hartung is a fusion of techno visuals, instinctive notebook scribbles, and glitch aesthetics.
A fast but incredibly controlled art.
Historical yet ultra-contemporary in energy. A work marked by rigor, intuition, and a desire to paint the invisible—the forces, the impulses, the heartbreaks of the modern soul.
Why is it presented here?
Because Hartung is one of the great masters of post-war lyrical abstraction.
Because Hartung is speed transformed into visual emotion. A gesture that snaps like lightning.
Because he is an essential, historic artist, a heavyweight in European abstraction.
Where to see it?
- Hartung-Bergman Foundation, Antibes
- Pompidou Center, Paris
- Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris
- Tate Modern, London
- MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), New York
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
- Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland
- New National Gallery, Berlin