Hans Hartung

The Choice of Painting

Tessé Museum, Le Mans

The Tessé Museum is presenting the exhibition “The Choice of Painting, Another History of Abstraction, 1962-1989” from February 10th to June 9th, 2024. It offers a panorama of three decades of abstract painting in France, from the 1960s to the 1980s.

How did artists kept on painting when the trend, starting from the 1960s, gazed towards pop art, non-art, conceptual art, or minimalism? Through about sixty works, the exhibition explores this interrogation by reflecting the diversity of new pictorial approaches based on a different conception of gesture, the role of colour, and the notion of painting.

Victor Vanoosten, exhibition curator

Musée de Tessé
2 avenue de Paderborn
72000 Le Mans

Free Admission
Hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Catalogue: THE CHOICE OF PAINTING Another history of abstraction in France 1962-1989.

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VASARELY BEFORE THE OP: European abstraction, 1945-1955

Fondation Vasarely, Aix-En-Provence

The Vasarely Foundation continues its partnership with the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne-Centre de création industrielle for the 4th consecutive year, with the summer exhibition “Vasarely avant l’Op, une abstraction européenne, 1945-1955”. From June 17 to October 15, 2023, a selection of 35 major works on loan from the Paris museum, the Musée départemental Matisse, the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris, the Hartung-Bergman Foundation, the Marta Pan Foundation, the Denise René Gallery and private collections will be presented in Aix-en-Provence, at the Vasarely Foundation for four months.

Exhibition with works by Agam, Jean-Michel Atlan, André Bloc, Simone Boisecq, Robert Breer, Geneviève Claisse, Jean Dewasne, Jean Deyrolle, Cesar Domela, Etienne Gilioli, Hans Hartung, Auguste Herbin, Robert Jacobsen, Berto Lardera, Alberto Magnelli, Richard Mortensen, Pablo Palazuelo, Marta Pan, Ideo Pantaleoni, Alicia Penalba, Edgar Pillet, Serge Poliakoff, Gérard Schneider, Pierre Soulages, Victor Vasarely and Nicolaas Warb.

Curator of the exhibition: Michel Gauthier

An exhibition in partnership with the Musée National d’Art Moderne Centre Pompidou

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At the heart of Abstraction Works from the collection of the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art

Fondation Maeght

The exhibition at the Fondation Maeght will show works from the collection of the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art from the 2nd of July until the 20th of November 2022 and offers an immersion in the vibrant creation of the years 1945 to 1980.

Home to a collection of more than 13,000 works, Fondation Maeght is always keen and honoured to showcase other collections, some of which are rarely accessible to the public, as it has consistently done in the past. This summer, from 2 July to 20 November, it is unveiling some 120 works from the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art (Geneva) and offering a riveting immersion into abstraction from the 1950s to the 1980s.

In the wake of Second World War, as many European artists exiled in the United States headed back to France, Paris regained its status as a hotbed of creativity and a global cultural capital. Driven by a thirst for freedom and a craving to rethink painting in the post-war years, artists from all over the world returned to their studios, abandoned during the German occupation, and engaged in an era of creative effervescence, be it in the arts, literature or filmmaking. While the breakthroughs by the vanguards of the first half of the 20th century were an invaluable post-war stimulus, abstract art renewed itself from the most gestural expression to the interrogation of materials, mediums and techniques.

The Fondation Gandur pour l’Art’s outstanding collection displayed at Fondation Maeght reveals the variety of forms em- braced by abstraction during these creative years. Works by Hans Hartung, Martin Barré, Simon Hantaï or Pierre Soulag- es trace the evolution of non-figurative art over four decades. In a thematic and chronological layout, the exhibition invites the viewer to discover lyrical and gestural abstraction by Georges Mathieu, abstract expressionism by Sam Francis and Joan Mitchell, geometric abstraction by Victor Vasarely, kinetic works by Alexander Calder and Jean Tinguely, through to the rethinking of painting by the Supports/Surfaces group. The 1980s ushered in an era of revitalized abstract art, building on the hectic experimentation of earlier years.

Guest curator: Yan Schubert, the Gandur Collection pour l’Art curato

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The archives of creation

Fondation Hartung Bergman

With Anna-Eva-Bergman as with Hans Hartung, the fact of archiving and archiving everything (sketches, letters, photographs, press…) was at the heart of their life and their work. It is one of the common dominators of the two artists, who are otherwise so autonomous in their aesthetic approach. The Hartung Bergman Foundation which emanates from their will is the embodiment of this obsession. Rich in an exceptional collection of canvases, drawings, notebooks, innumerable documents, the Foundation makes it possible to trace almost from day to day the intertwining of the creative process and the daily existence of this couple of painters among the most outstanding. and originals of the modern period. From May 11 to September 30, 2022, the exhibition “Les archives de la création” is a dive into the secrets of their production, whether free gesture, mathematical meticulousness, sometimes even the memory of an ancient craft. From a simple tool to the entire structure of the workshop, passing through contemporary or classical sources of inspiration, the “factory” of their respective and common universes is revealed here for the first time in the sumptuous setting of their villa in Antibes. .

Curator: Juliette Persilier

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La luce nel nero

Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri

“La Luce del Nero” is the title of the upcoming exhibition hosted in one of the two museums of Fondazione Burri, the Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco in Città di Castello, Italy. Here, the color Black shifts from the concept of dark and absence to becoming an actual color. This event has been designed to be inclusive for a public with visual impairment, besides offering an immediate and highly stimulating sensorial experience to all visitors.

Bruno Corà, curator of this exhibition and President of Fondazione Burri, highlights how Black “between the Middle Ages and the XVII century was no longer considered a color. Artists restored its chromatic value and among them, in particular Kazimir Malevič, author of the well-known “Black Square on white background” (1915), a print of which is present in our exhibition”.
Among the artists of the second half of the XX century, Burri is the one who most used the color Black, to the extent of painting the Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco completely black. These industrial buildings became the museum hosting its major pictorial cycles.

Together with Burri, other artists included in this exhibition created artworks using black, such as Agnetti, Bassiri, Bendini, Castellani, Fontana, Hartung, Isgrò, Kounellis, Lo Savio, Morris, Nevelson, Nunzio, Parmiggiani, Schifano, Soulages and Tàpies. Each one of them with different modalities, intentions and meaning, all capable of arousing in the visitor different feelings, perceptions, sensations. Eventually, poets feelings as well are turned on Black and caecitas to explain the inner gaze of the psychic and poetic look in opposition to the actual vision.
The exhibition “La Luce del Nero” has been organized within the framework of the Creative Europe programme, through the “Beam Up” project (Blind Engagement In Accessible Museum Projects), which addresses the issue of accessibility of contemporary art for a public with visual impairment at an international and inclusive level.

This exhibition crowns the reopening of the venues of the Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco after 7 years of constructions, which fully upgraded these exhibition areas. As stated by Mr. Corà “in the world, there are very few artist’s museums such as the Burri museum in Città di Castello, which can pride itself on having a museum itinerary that starts from Palazzo Albizzini and ends to the Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco without fearing comparisons with any other museum”.

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Calder, Soulages, Vasarely,… Abstractions plurielles (1950-1980)

Musée d'art de Pully

Le Musée d’art de Pully collabore avec la Fondation Gandur pour l’Art autour d’une exposition consacrée à la peinture informelle des années 1950 à 1980.

Les années qui suivent la Seconde Guerre mondiale connaissent une grande effervescence artistique. Paris reprend rapidement sa place de capitale culturelle et attire des peintres du monde entier. La tendance géométrique, qui prend sa source dans les avant-gardes du début du XXe siècle, connaît alors de nouveaux développements. De nombreux artistes mettent l’accent sur le geste ou la matière, recourent à de nouvelles techniques et repensent la peinture et ses supports.

Composée d’œuvres issues de la Fondation Gandur pour l’Art rarement présentées au public suisse, l’exposition propose un parcours original à travers la production bouillonnante des années 1950 à 1980, provenant des deux côtés de l’Atlantique.

Centrée sur les formes plurielles que prend l’abstraction au cours de cette période, elle montre les principales tendances : l’abstraction lyrique et gestuelle de Georges Mathieu ou de Hans Hartung, l’expressionnisme abstrait de Pierre Soulages ou de Sam Francis, l’abstraction géométrique de Victor Vasarely ou de François Morellet, ou encore la peinture minimale de Martin Barré, la sculpture cinétique de Jean Tinguely ou un monumental mobile d’Alexandre Calder. Quant au mouvemenent Supports/Surfaces, qui remet en question les moyens picturaux traditionnels, il marque à la fois une conclusion à cette période d’expérimentation intense et le début d’une aventure qui se poursuit aujourd’hui encore.

La Fondation Gandur pour l’Art a été créée en 2010 par Jean Claude Gandur, grand collectionneur d’art, afin de rendre accessible à un large public ses collections d’envergure internationale. Basée à Genève et reconnue d’utilité publique, la Fondation s’emploie à préserver, documenter, enrichir et exposer ses collections dans des institutions de renom en Suisse et à l’étranger.

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Hans Hartung, La peinture pour mémoire

Pierre Wat

Figure incontournable de l’art moderne et acteur marquant de l’abstraction, Hans Hartung (1904-1989) n’a eu de cesse, sa vie durant, de laisser derrière lui des souvenirs de son activité  : un «  autoportrait  » en mots, qu’il publie en 1976, d’autres mots encore, des archives, des œuvres, entrelacés… Pour mémoire.
Ecrire sur Hans Hartung c’est suivre cet homme à la trace, c’est se confronter à ce legs, conservé aujourd’hui dans le lieu même de sa vie et de sa peinture  : la maison qu’il a construite avec sa femme, l’artiste Anna-Eva Bergman, devenue Fondation Hartung-Bergman. Hartung voulait que cet endroit, et ce qu’il contenait, soient dédiés à la recherche.
Cette monographie, née de ce souhait, est la première de cette ampleur. Pierre Wat l’a pensée comme une longue conversation avec le peintre. Confrontant les dires, les archives et les œuvres, quelque chose de cette vérité de Hartung, celle qu’il voulait qu’on cherche, surgit.
Artiste prolifique, Hartung a laissé une œuvre immense, dont l’auteur a pu s’imprégner, pas à pas, année après année, parfois heure par heure, des premières aquarelles abstraites de 1922 au dernières toiles peintes à la sulfateuse de jardin, en 1989. Ce choix d’appeler dans chaque œuvre la mémoire d’un moment, d’un geste, d’une intention, a mis en évidence, au-delà des changements de rythme, de méthode, d’instrument, la continuité profonde qui guide le peintre, dès l’origine.
Le temps de Hartung est spiralé, il avance en prenant en compte le passé, afin d’en produire, sans cesse, la relève. Dans ce jeu entre connaissance et sensation, un artiste incroyablement singulier, loin des clichés «  lyriques  » qui lui ont longtemps collé à la peau, émerge. Un homme pour qui l’art est à la fois exploration et mémoire, enquête sur soi et captation du monde, infiniment.

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Hans Hartung | La fabrique du geste

Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris

On the occasion of its re-opening after extensive renovation work, the Museum of Modern Art presents a retrospective of work by the painter Hans Hartung (1904-1989).

Given that his last retrospective in a French museum dates from 1969, it was time to restore the visibility Hans Hartung (1904–1989) so richly deserves. This exhibition brings a fresh eye to the oeuvre of this major 20th-century artist and his crucial role in art history: Hartung was a forerunner of abstraction, one of the most influential artistic discoveries of his time.

Spanning a century, his career was marked by a thirst for freedom equal to the obstacles he had to face: the rise of fascism in his native Germany, and the precarity of his existence in postwar France, with its physical and psychological aftereffects. Yet never for a moment did he stop painting.

This retrospective is built around a tightly focused selection of some 300 works from various collections – French and international, public and private – and most notably the Hartung-Bergman Foundation. This tribute is a follow-up to the Museum’s acquisition of a group of four works by Hartung in 2017.

The visitor is introduced to the wide range of media, the wealth of technical innovations and the array of tools used during six prolific decades. For Hartung experimentation was all-important, as was the uncompromising, conceptually inflected modernism he embodied. The essays on colour and format as a rigorous studio methodology, together with framing, photography, enlargement, repetition and – even more surprising – identical reproduction of quite a few of his works, were all elements of his research into the original and the authentic and have lost nothing of their relevance today. Hartung paved the way, too, for a number of his fellow artists, among them Pierre Soulages, who was always frank about his debt to him.

The exhibition takes the form of a succession of chronological sequences divided into four main sections. In addition to the paintings photographs testifying to the importance of the medium in his explorations, groups of graphic works, illustrated limited editions, experiments with ceramics and a selection of painted stones round off this retracing of a singular life path.

This account of Hartung’s career and his part in the art history of his time is backed up by books, letters, notebooks, sketches, a youthful diary, catalogues, invitations, posters, photographs, documentary films and other archival material.

While a commanding figure in 20th-century abstraction, Hans Hartung cannot be confined to the role of mere precursor. Turned towards a future of human and technological progress, his artistic vision continues to challenge us today. The tension and interaction between these complementary aspects of the Hartung vocation come together as the guiding thread of this exhibition.

A catalogue including fifteen essays and selected other texts is published by Paris Musées.

CURATOR: Odile Burluraux
Assistant : Julie Sissia

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Hans Hartung – Les années de guerre

Fondation Hartung-Bergman

Catalogue retraçant la production artistique et le quotidien du peintre franco-allemand durant la Seconde guerre mondiale. Légionnaire puis fugitif, Hartung développe pendant ces années une œuvre protéiforme, partagée entre continuité – abstractions colorées aux vifs contours noirs – et expérimentation, développant un étonnant vocabulaire figuratif tout en s’inspirant de sa collaboration avec le sculpteur Julio González.

Ce volume spécial a été édité par la Fondation Hartung-Bergman à l’occasion de l’exposition « Hans Hartung et les années de guerre » au Musée Zervos de Vézelay (Yonne) à l’été 2018. Faisant la part belle à l’illustration, il présente les principaux aspects de l’œuvre de l’artiste développés durant le second conflit mondial et son passage par la Légion étrangère : les encres et dessins, les peintures abstraites, mais aussi des pans moins connus de cette production avec la série des « Têtes » ou bien les objets dits « gonzaloïdes » inspirés par la fréquentation de son beau-père de l’époque, le sculpteur espagnol Julio González.

Éditeur : Les presses du réel
Format : 22 x 28,5 cm (broché)
84 pages
14 euros

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HARTUNG ET LES PEINTRES LYRIQUES

Fonds Hélène & Édouard Leclerc pour la Culture

Grâce à des prêts exceptionnels, cette exposition fait entrer Hartung en résonance avec des artistes que l’on relie historiquement à « l’abstraction lyrique » du début des années 50.

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