Focus | Hans Hartung

Dated 1967, the year the artist was named a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, the works in this Focus capture a significant moment in Hartung’s career. The baryta cardboard, with its glossy surface and brilliant whiteness, provided the artist with an ideal canvas for fully expressing his pictorial language.

A pivotal decade in his career, the 1960s established him on the international scene, notably with the Grand Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale, which celebrated his innovative ideas and techniques. This remarkable collection highlights his unique approaches to baryta cardboard. The luminous intensity of the white enhances the presence of the brushstroke, particularly in the artist’s iconic scraping techniques.

Combined with oil pastels and ink, which glide fluidly and encourage a lyrical, spontaneous momentum, this medium reveals the tension between mastery and impulse, an expression also found in his works on canvas.

“Scribbling, scratching, acting on the canvas, and finally painting, seem to me to be human activities as immediate, spontaneous, and simple as the song, dance, or play of an animal that runs, prances, or brays.”

Hans Hartung