Hans Hartung: Painter • Photographer

HANS HARTUNG

Painter • Photographer

HANS HARTUNG Painter • Photographer

Previous spreads: T1989–E29 1989 [detail] Autoportrait (Minox) 1966 Le trou noir (Minox) 1962

Untitled 1962 Negatives of photographs that Hans Hartung took during a visit to Carboneras, Spain in 1962.

The image fourth from the left, on the bottom row, is printed on the previous page of this publication.

It shows a cave dwelling that Hartung has zoomed in on, exploring the indistinct and abstract shapes of the entrance.

8

Introduction Louise Malcolm

‘I tamed the lightning’

27

Lena Fritsch

50

Optics on the absolute The visual and the visionary in the life and work of Hans Hartung Pauline Mari

Illustrated Chronology

80

List of Works

88

Image Credits

92

Public Collections & Bibliography

93

Acknowledgements

96

Introduction

Louise Malcolm ‘I took photos of everything that interested me in the world: people, clouds, water, mountains, cracks, stains, and all sorts of light and shade effects, which – sometimes – have a more or less direct relationship to my painting.’ 1 Celebrated as one of Europe’s foremost abstract painters, it was in photographs that Hans Hartung first captured the universal energies his paintings seek to preserve. Hartung’s fascination with photog­ raphy began in childhood, when he turned his father’s cigar boxes into pinhole cameras, attaching them to a telescope to photograph the moon [p. 26]. Later, the lightweight Leica and Minox cameras that Hartung kept about him made photographing everything in his locale a reflex. The sheer number of images he shot is evident in the over 35,000 photographic negatives and prints held today by Fondation Hartung-Bergman; 2 the tremendous value Hartung as­ cribed them revealed by the numerous albums in which they are chronologically and thematically organised.3 For this reason, viewing Hartung’s paintings alongside his photographs is illuminating: to do so grounds the artist’s abstraction in a worldly, lived reality, in con­ trast to the internal concerns that predominantly occupied European abstract painters of the 20th-century.

Hartung’s photograph albums reflect his rejection of traditional dis­ tinctions of beauty. With themes that include ‘above the clouds’, ‘heads and legs’, ‘windows’, ‘cracks in the tar’, ‘foliage’ and ‘lights and shadows’, his photographic eye unwaveringly seeks out the abstract in the everyday. Hartung shows us linear patterns in jet trails cross­ ing the Antibes sky and in speeding lights captured with a long exposure; the calligraphic shapes of intertwined branches and the cracks in asphalt pavements; the granular textures of stones repeat­ ed in grainy images of clouds; a stark flash of lightning reflecting off the sea to illuminate the night sky. These images are punctuated with the numerous ‘selfies’ that Hartung took throughout his life, often in a mirror and, in later life, his wheelchair [p. 84].

Hartung’s fragmented and ephemeral photographs bleed into and anticipate his paintings. In 1932, Hartung started to experiment with his negatives, scratching and painting on them in compositions that evolved into the calligraphic oil paintings of the 1940s and

Autoportrait 1935

8

Autoportrait 1987

1950s [p. 19]. Continuing his childhood love of innovation, in the 1960s, Hartung invented painting tools to trace and mimic the light effects and textures he had captured with his camera: sharp instruments scratch deep grooves into dark paint to reveal bright colours beneath; metal combs and brooms made from the branches of Hartung’s olive trees apply paint in rough striations. For his sulfateuse paintings of the 1980s, Hartung’s portable air-spray-guns create hazy effects that mimic his atmospheric photographs of clouds to suggest galac­ tical infinity. These paintings – produced quickly and at arm’s length – parallel photography’s speed and distance. In both painting and through his camera lens, Hartung captures universal energies at the split second of their appearance, isolating and presenting a moment from a continuum.

9

Despite the creative significance of his photographs, Hartung was 73 years old when he first exhibited them in 1977. That exhibition, ‘Hartung Photographe’, curated by Daniel Abadie at Le Cercle Noroit, Arras, led to a handful of others dedicated to Hartung’s photograph­ ic production, including at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and the Staats­ galerie Moderner Kunst, Munich (1981–1982); the Centre Pompidou, Paris (1982) and the Museum Für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen (2016).4 Nevertheless, while many are familiar with Hartung’s paintings, his photographic oeuvre remains less well-known, particularly outside France and Germany. ‘Hans Hartung: Painter • Photographer’, pro­ vides the first opportunity for British audiences to see Hartung’s photographs. Their display alongside paintings made over four decades illuminates the dynamic cycle in which Hartung, seeing abstraction in everything, reaffirmed his abstract tendencies in painting. Seen together, the two disciplines capture and reveal Hartung’s singular vision of the world.

1

Selbstportrait, Hans Hartung, Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 1981. Original French edition by Éditions Grasset, 1976. Translation by Shane Anderson.

2

The Fondation Hartung-Bergman is based in Antibes, in the South of France.

3

For a detailed exploration of Hartung’s pho­ tography see Hans Hartung Photographe: La légende d’une oeuvre, Jacques Damez, Brussels: La Lettre Volée, 2003.

4

See the illustrated chronology on pp. 80–85 of this publication for details of exhibitions show­ casing Hartung’s photographs.

Grattage 1932 Untitled 1932

10

Untitled 1932

T1947–47 1947

Untitled 1932

16

Untitled 1932

17

19

T1955–23a 1955

Previous spread: Untitled (Leica) 1959

Composition 1952

22

P1952–12 1952

23

PU–27 1950

24

25

T1957–4 1957

26

‘I tamed the lightning’

Lena Fritsch Endlessly intertwined branches reflect on water like dark ink on paper; slim reed stalks elegantly punctuate a shimmering lake; blurry lines of light flash against the night sky; soft seas of hazy clouds suggest the ominous – Hans Hartung’s dynamic black and white photographs convey a lyrical and atmospheric aura. They focus on light, form and rhythm, oscillating between the concrete and abstract, the micro and macro, the real and the fantastical.

Hartung discovered photography at an early age: he was only eight or nine years old when he developed his first photographs with his father in a small dark room at their Basel home. Around the same time, Hartung constructed his first camera prototype with wood from old cigar boxes. Hartung further developed this camera as a teenager, fixing it onto the ocular of a telescope to capture the moon and stars. These early photographs – including the hazy and grainy photograph, Lune (1916), of a full moon glowing a soft white, like a shining orb over a grey background [facing page] – prefigure Hartung’s interest in abstract shapes and poetic compositions.1 Later, the availability of the lightweight, portable camera allowed the artist to always carry one: he had a Minox and a Leica. Using these intensively, Hartung described his photographs as ‘a second memory’, a way to capture in his mind a trace of reality.2 Hartung was particularly interested in the effects of light in nature and urban spaces, photographing various forms, textures and patterns that seep into and inform his painting.

While Hartung’s paintings are celebrated internationally in major museum exhibitions, his photographic oeuvre – despite its multitude of meticulously organised negatives and prints – remains less wellknown3. This exhibition and book present Hartung’s photographs in dialogue with selected paintings, showcasing their visual similar­ ities, formal continuities and conceptual parallels. Despite being informed by a great knowledge of mathematical ordering systems, aesthetics and alchemical principles,4 Hartung’s practice reflects experimentation, intuition and speed. Both his photographs and paintings embody a feeling of vivid spontaneity and instinct.

27

Lune 1916

The visual parallels between Hartung’s photographs and paintings are notable. His 1950s photographs of intertwined tree branches

and their reflections in water recall many of his early oil paintings, such as T1947–47 (1947) [pp. 12–15] and T1955–23a (1955) [p. 19], where dark calligraphic marks form interlinked circles and explosive motifs that contrast with the lightly coloured canvas, their spatial dynamism providing movement and speed. Branches inform late paintings, such as T1982–R18 (1982) [pp. 43–45] and T1983–E34 (1983) [pp. 48–49], to such an extent that Hartung uses those found in his ancient olive grove to spread entangled streaks of black paint onto azure surfaces. The results suggest an impression of organic growth similar to that which appears in his photographs.

Long exposure photographs of light effects at night, including Eclair (1966) [pp. 72–73] and Jeu de Lumière (Minox) (1970s) [pp. 40–41] and photographs of aeroplane condensation trails, such as Traînées, Antibes (1976) [p. 66], echo Hartung’s paintings that feature slim lines scored and scratched into black and indigo paint. In T1962–L48 (1962) [pp. 36–37, 39] and T1963–H42 (1963) [pp. 31–33], filaments of light blue, yellow and orange contrast with the dark background; sometimes their contours are soft, resulting in a mellow transition of tones. Despite these dynamic lines and strong con­ trasts, Hartung’s photographs and paintings both convey a sense of balance and harmony. The light effects Hartung captures also appear in his late sulfateuse paintings, for which he used spray guns. In T1989–E29 (1989) [pp. 75–77], paint shimmers and twinkles explosively against a dark background, just like night time illumina­ tions. Here, colour fields appear to be in flux, merging and sweeping across the canvas so that the viewer’s eye finds no focus within the atmospheric, ‘cloudy’ composition. The soft and hazy effects of such sulfateuse paintings similarly link them with Hartung’s 1960s photographs of clouds [pp. 78–79, 86–87], taken from the then novel perspective of an aeroplane.

Art historian and curator David Anfam recently wrote about the ‘blur’ in Hartung’s work, fittingly comparing his artistic world with that of German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, which blurs ‘earth, sea and cloud, suggesting – as does Hartung’s artistic universe – the limits of the visible.’ 5 Focussing on light, form and composition, Hartung’s photographs and paintings evoke a sublime elegance without forgoing their natural vitality. In his earlier paintings in

28

particular, the artist’s brush strokes reflect vigorous hand gestures.

This expressive action differs from photography’s more distanced ‘discovery’ of existing forms, be they tree branches, light effects or clouds. However, just like his carefully composed photographs, Hartung’s paintings carry an elemental energy that links them to the natural world rather than to human self-expression.

Hartung regularly went on excursions and emphasised how inspir­ ational the experience of nature was for his artistic work. At the beginning of his 1976 autobiography Selbstportrait, he refers to the sky, thunder and lightning and his childhood memory of opening a window to deliberately face a thunderstorm. He began to draw what he saw: ‘I caught the quivering flashes of the lightning in my notebooks, on the fly. Even before the thunderclaps struck, the zig­ zagging lines needed to be down on the paper. I tamed the lightning this way […] I am sure that the lightning of my childhood had an in­ fluence on my artistic development.’6 The young Hartung overcame his fear by concentrating on the lightning’s shapes and forms as elements of an artistic composition. Also in Selbstportrait, Hartung wrote about his fascination with water, describing swimming in the ocean as feeling ‘almost weightless’ in a space where ‘everything surges and flows around us, where air bubbles shimmering in the sun graze us’.7 As these quotations illuminate, Hartung’s art is born out of a deep appreciation of nature with all its shapes and structures, and its powerful energies. His paintings, however, do not mimic reality but become autonomous and self-referential, independent images. The lightning, trees, water and clouds in his photographs and the abstract forms and compositions of his paint­ ings are equally rooted in the visible world, yet surpass the real to inhabit their own artistic universe.

Hans Hartung’s art has lost none of its vibrancy. Although created from different artistic tools, his paintings and photographs are root­ ed in the same concept: finding abstraction in reality and ‘taming’ nature’s forces in timeless pieces of art. Hartung used photographs as inspirational references, provoking visual ideas for his paintings.

Simultaneously, they are precisely composed works of art in their own right, conveying a unique and lyrical beauty that deserves to be seen.

29

1

For more information on Hartung’s photography see Fondation Hartung-Bergman, ‘Hans Hartung – eine unablässige Bilderfabrik’. In Hartung und die Fotografie / et la photographie, Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, Munich: Hirmer, 2016, pp. 23–29.

2

Cristiano Isnardi, ‘Hans Hartung, Photographer’.

In Hans Hartung. Au commencement était la foudre, Amnon Barzel and Cristiano Isnardi, Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2007, p. 146.

3

Hartung’s photographic oeuvre is best known in France and Germany as a result of a handful of exhibitions that have focused on this aspect of Hartung’s practice. For more information, see Hartung’s chronology on p. 80 of this volume.

4

See Hans Hartung, Malerei, Zeichnung, Photo­ graphie, Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Kunstbuch Berlin: Berlin, 1981.

5

David Anfam, ‘The Blur’. In Hans Hartung, Simon Lee, Nahmad Contemporary and Perrotin, Lon­ don and New York, 2018, p. 105.

6

Selbstportrait, Hans Hartung, Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 1981, p. 5. Original French edition by Éditions Grasset, 1976. Translation by Shane Anderson.

7

Ibid, p. 22.

Les Baux (Leica) 1959

30

31

T1963–H42 1963

Untitled (Leica) 1959

Untitled (Leica) 1959

Untitled (Leica) 1959

34

35

T1963–R23 1963

Previous spread and opposite: T1962–L48 1962

38

Previous spread: Jeu de lumière (Minox) 1970

T1982–R18 1982

42

43

Untitled (Minox) 1982

47

Feuillage foncé 1969

Following spread: T1983–E34 1983

Optics on the absolute The visual and the visionary in the life and work of Hans Hartung Pauline Mari There is a recent find in the archives of Hans Hartung 1 which is both remarkable and powerfully touching. In the late 1940s, Hartung wrote a long list of everything he had lost since childhood.2 He head­ ed the list: ‘impression de toujours tout perdre’, which translates as ‘an impression of constant loss’ or ‘it feels like I’m always losing everything’. The list of losses includes his ‘wife’ (the artist Anna-Eva Bergman who left him in 1937. They remarried in 1957); his ‘leg’ (lost fighting with the French Foreign Legion against the Nazis); ‘mother’ and ‘father’ (both of whom had passed away many years previously); ‘home’ (the house he had built in Minorca in 1933 was destroyed during the Spanish Civil War). It is, however, the first lines of the list that are most surprising. Hartung begins with his ‘plastic frog’, a toy that was swept away by the North Sea and, underneath this, the scribbled entry: ‘my eyes’.

What could Hartung have meant? He almost certainly refers to a trauma largely ignored in accounts of the artist’s life. Aged 15 and liv­ ing in Dresden, Hartung was told his astigmatism would render him sightless. Seeking a treatment, an ophthalmologist recommended an urgent operation, despite the risks such a procedure involved in the early 20th-century. The adolescent Hartung was terror-stricken.

Following the doctor’s sudden death, a radically different approach was suggested by his new physician. Hartung’s sight improved progressively and, after this close brush with disaster, the young man kept his eyes intact. This experience played a significant role in developing Hartung’s lifelong dedication to the faculty of sight and his constant observation of everything around him from all angles, from the centre and the periphery, from close up and far away.

Even before this incident, viewing technologies had interested the young artist. Hartung was a stargazer, his hobby immortalised in an often-reproduced photograph in which he appears as a 12-year-old, eyes glued to a home-made telescope. In the late 1970s, Hartung would boast that he had built it himself. The child must have been a keen engineer, for he also designed his own camera, a forerunner of the devices he would use to photograph the world as an adult.

Hartung took distinctive portraits of famous personalities (the artists Zao Wou-Ki and Alexander Calder, and French New Wave film

50

director and screenwriter Éric Rohmer), expressionist landscapes with trees chiselled into the horizon [p. 34]; a fragmented sea of clouds taken from the window of an aircraft [pp. 78–79]; cracks and fissures in asphalt captured with documentary precision [pp. 68–69]; fabulous geometrical architecture and so on.

Art historians have celebrated how Hartung, from the 1960s onwards, used an enormous variety of tools with which to manipulate paint, from brooms and combs to razor blades and spray nozzles. Thinking of these as ‘prosthetic devices’ to compensate for the lack of mobil­ ity caused by his leg amputation, Hartung used tools to echo the textures and abstract patterns captured in his photographs. So it follows that – optical enthusiast as he was – Hartung’s telescope and then the Minox and Leica cameras that he always carried with him were themselves visual prostheses. Not content to merely keep his eyesight, Hartung wanted to render it all the more powerful, his vision as far-sighted and keen as that of an eagle or a cat. In this context, we might again delve into the Hartung archives, where an enormous collection of medical documents attest to the artist’s extreme care in selecting the right pair of glasses and precisely the right corrective lenses to retain his sense of perfect vision.

Paradoxically, whilst seeking flawless vision, Hartung was, in many respects, a painter of the blot and the blur and not necessarily an artist of the clear-cut or representational. We can understand these abstract tendencies through Hartung’s childhood obsession with mark-making3 and his teenage discovery of Rembrandt, particularly the latter’s rendition of fabric swirling in the folds of quilted sleeves in his Portrait de Famille (1668). Rembrandt’s daubs convinced Hartung of the crucial importance of painterly marks in the history of art. He explains, ‘I was rooted to the spot in front of this painting.

I suddenly realised what I wanted to do in life. In the folds and drapes of the mother’s gown, I discovered that Rembrandt too was a mark maker. His marks had a life of their own, with their rhythm, their col­ ours, their character and their expressiveness. I was so excited by this realisation that I almost fainted. I had to sit on a bench until my head stopped spinning.’ 4 And so Hartung began to experiment with abstract marks that art historians would later describe as Tachisme.5

51

Hartung observing the sky with his telescope in Dresden, 1918 [photographer unknown]

Here, Hartung is photographed at the studio of Shunk and Kender, Paris in 1951. He is looking at a portrait of Yves Klein in a revealing eye-to-eye encounter… [photographer Harry Shunk / Shunk-Kender]

Autoportrait 1966 In this self portrait with a Leica, Hartung exudes a sense of glee at his own distortion.

These are first evident in the series of translucent and energetic watercolours Hartung painted aged 18 in 1922 [p. 81] and in his curi­ ous early photographs. With his home-made camera or a camera fixed to the end of a telescope, Hartung made trembling, dissolving and granulated off-kilter photographs [pp. 26, 80].

Hartung loved the visual distortion of these images, which capture moments of disorientation in which you don’t quite know where you are, and everything is both luminous and dark. See, for example Le trou noir (Minox) (1962) [pp. 4–5] and Lumière horizontale (Minox) (1980) [pp. 94–95]. Similar dissociative effects are invoked by his 1974 shot of a great halo at the end of a tunnel, taken from the front seat of a car, Untitled (Minox) (1974) [p. 54] and his photographs of crackled asphalt, like Fissures dans le goudron (Leica) (1982) [p. 69].

These obscured traces of the world reflected the painter’s intuition toward abstraction and gave it renewed impetus and inspiration, feeding into a dynamic cycle.

Visual distortion can conceal the world of the fantastical, and Hartung was undoubtedly a dreamer, in love with the imaginary and with Romantic literature. We see hallucinations and artificial paradises worthy of Charles Baudelaire and Thomas de Quincey in the stark psychedelic contrast between fluorescent and dark layers in T1989–E29 (1989) [pp. 75–77]. Other paintings, such as T1947–47 (1947) [pp. 12–15], with its centripetal spiral and accompanying array of chaotic elements, are revelations of cosmic visions. Hypnagogic dreams, which happen in the first moments of sleep, are evoked in T1982–R18 (1982) [pp. 43–45] with its blue floating phosphenes.

Hypnopompic dreams, which happen in the first moments of awakening, are brought to mind by T1962–L48 (1962) [pp. 36–37, 39], its jostling vertical bands of colour evoking a series of rapid eye movements.

In the catalogue for Hartung’s 2019 retrospective at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Thomas Schlesser, Director of the Fondation

52

Hartung-Bergman, wrote: ‘Hartung’s 1960s canvases are not, strict­ ly speaking, Op Art. Nevertheless, their aesthetic of sprayed and scratched layers captures on canvas the same effect as was generated by Op Art or by the Dreamachine 6 of Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville on the retina of anyone who looked at those avant-garde works.’ 7 Hartung was often critical of his contemporar­ ies, with the exception of his two friends, Pierre Soulages and Mark Rothko, yet did concede a certain inclination towards Op.8 He loved the sincerity and discipline of its avant-garde scientific processes.

This appreciation makes perfect sense: while Hartung took great care of his vision, he also enjoyed surprising it, twisting and altering it. He applied himself to both enhancing and diminishing it, pushing the boundaries of the visible and exploring the impossibility of representation that is abstraction.

Considering altered modes of viewing, it is relevant that Hartung was consumed by mental turmoil. His correspondence from the 1930s 9 refers to crises of depression and a near-constant sense of persecution caused by devastating entanglements with Nazism.10 In his diaries, we find several entries in 1937 with the letter ‘N.’, which stands for ‘Sacha Nacht,’ 11 Hartung’s psychiatrist. In his prac­ tice at the Saint-Anne hospital, Nacht diagnosed Hartung with ‘névropathie,’ 12 a psychological neurosis that required six months of treatment.

Some psychiatric disorders induce the sufferer to distance them­ selves from reality, focusing on things that others do not see. Those of sound mind might be considered just as imprisoned, bound to ordinary ways of seeing and incapable of deviating from estab­ lished points of reference. It was Hartung’s gift to burst through the confining bars of conventional ways of seeing, not by any chaotic or devastating unleashing, but by painting shapes that, without ever being nameable or identifiable or even referring to any element of reality, provide glimpses into aspects on which the ‘regard de la Raison’ never focuses. Interlacings, cracks, saturations, curves and interruptions, striated and grooved subjects, neither completely concrete nor insubstantial, are what make works such as PU–27 (1950) [p. 24], Composition (1952) [p. 22] and T1955–23a (1955) [p. 19] so captivating.

53

The elegance and perfect balance of the oil on canvas T1955–23a emerge from a preliminary Indian ink drawing made with an intuitive, crisp and flawless linear gesture. The painting was owned by Will Grohmann, the great historian and critic of 20th-century Modern art.

Apart from Anna-Eva Bergman, Grohmann was the first to under­ stand Hartung’s talent: it was in 1931 at the Heinrich Kühl gallery in Dresden, where the young artist was exhibiting some mostly figura­ tive paintings, that Grohmann realised the depth and breadth of the artist’s vision. In his 1966 text on Hartung’s abstract watercolours,13 Grohmann reminds us of the artist’s universal impulses, which he captures at the fleeting moment of their appearance, both in paint­ ing and through the lens of a camera: ‘[Hartung] was, from the start, attracted to the more absolute aspects of the world’.14 Grohmann also reminds us of the simplicity of the mark marking that sits at the heart of all Hartung’s work. These marks, and the optical distortions they convey, invite us to experience his idiosyncratic vision of the world. All Hartung asks is that we abandon conventional ways of seeing, and look with him, as if through his eyes.

1

The archives of Hans Hartung are held by the Fondation Hartung-Bergman in Antibes, in the South of France.

2

Hans Hartung, handwritten personal notes (1948–1949), archives of the Fondation Har­ tung-Bergman.

3

At times, Hartung’s love of making marks got him into trouble with his teachers and his father, especially when he would not stop dripping ink onto scraps of paper, which he would carefully preserve. On one occasion, he and a school friend, Gottfried Fabian, embarked on a wild spree in which they daubed a statue of Aphro­ dite with splotches of paint.

4

Hans Hartung, Autoportrait, 1976. Reprint Fondation Hartung-Bergman, 2016, Dijon: Les presses du réel, p. 58.

5

Tachisme was a French style of abstract paint­ ing popular in the 1940s and 1950s. The word stems from tache, the French word for stain.

6

The stroboscopic Dreamachine produced a flick­ering light that creates visual stimuli and a trance-like hallucinatory state.

7

Thomas Schlesser, interview with Abraham Poincheval. In Hans Hartung – la fabrique du geste, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris: Paris-Musées, 2019, p. 258.

8

‘Une Visite à Hartung’, within the television pro­ gramme Champ visuel, produced by Olivier Ricard, broadcast on 7 March 1969, ORTF.

9

This correspondence by Hartung is unpub­ lished. Here we should refer to the archives of the Fondation Hartung-Bergman in general and in particular the exhaustive collection of ex­ changes between Hartung and Bergman there.

10

Hartung was rejected from Nazi Germany for being a ‘degenerate’ because his painting style was associated with Cubism. He was regularly shadowed and in 1935 underwent a brutal interrogation by the Berlin Gestapo, later enduring the arbitrary confiscation of his identity documents.

11

Hartung, diary for 1937, archives of the Fondation Hartung-Bergman.

12

Certificate of diagnosis issued by Sacha Nacht to Hans Hartung dated 24 April 1937, archives of the Fondation Hartung-Bergman.

13

Hans Hartung Aquarelle 1922, Will Grohmann, St. Gallen: Erker Verlag, 1966.

14

Ibid.

Untitled 1974

Untitled (Minox) 1974

54

55

Untitled 1969

57

T1989–L1 1989

T1989–N3 1989

Filets à St. Nazaré, Portugal 1970

61

63

T1989–E41 1989

Traînées, Antibes 1976

66

T1989–A12 1989

67

Alphalte sur le toit de la maison, Antibes (Leica) 1982

Fissures dans le goudron (Leica) 1974

68

69

T1989–L16 1989

71

Eclair 1966

75

T1989–E29 1989

Untitled (Leica) 1969

Untitled (Minox) 1964

78

79

Untitled (Leica) 1968

ILLUSTRATED CHRONOLOGY 1904 Hans Hartung is born on 21 September 1904, in Leipzig, Germany.

1910s The young Hartung shows a burgeoning interest in photography. In 1912, the family leave Leipzig for Basel where, in a dark room at their home, he and his father learn to develop photographs. Hartung’s father, a ‘moon watcher’, allows him to use the family telescope for stargazing; Hartung begins to construct his own cam­ eras with wood from his father’s cigar boxes.

The family move to Dresden in 1915, where Hartung’s interest in photography flourishes. He installs the tele­ scope on the veranda of the family home [as famously pictured in 1918, p. 51] and later in the attic to watch the stars more easily. Frustrated at not being able to capture these stellar visions, Hartung mounts one of his self-made cameras onto the end of the telescope.

Among the pictures he takes are images of the moon in its different phases [p. 26] and hazy cityscapes such as the photograph below, which captures the steeple of a church several kilometres away.

Girouette sur la pointe d’une église éloignée 1915

In 1919, an ophthalmologist diagnoses Hartung with serious astigmatism. The fear of losing his eyesight has a strong impact on Hartung, leading to a lifelong obsession with optics and vision.

1920s Having been inspired by the mark-making of Rem­ brandt, in 1922 Hartung produces a series of abstract watercolours that are striking by their sheer expressive­ ness, marking the start of his artistic career.

80

1930s Hartung’s first solo exhibition of paintings is held at the Kunstausstellung Kühl, Dresden in 1931.

In 1932, Hartung begins to experiment with his photo­ graphic negatives and glass plates, which he scratches, paints on and illuminates. These experiments evolve into the layered compositions with calligraphic motifs of the 1940s and 1950s. The same year, Hartung and Bergman leave Germany for the island of Minorca, where they build a small house.

Bleu au centre 1922, watercolour on paper

Hartung enters the Universität Leipzig in 1924 to study philosophy and art history, leaving to focus on painting at the Kunstakademie, Leipzig and then at the Kunst­ akademie, Dresden.

A 1926 exhibition of international art in Dresden expos­ es Hartung to works by Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso and inspires him to travel through Italy on a bicycle, discovering master­ pieces of ancient and modern art. That summer, Hartung visits Leucate, in the South of France, photo­ graphing and painting relentlessly, as if the real were tangible only through his images. He systematically photographs motifs that catch his attention: fisher­ men’s huts, tangles of reeds serving as windbreaks and cypress hedges. In late 1926, Hartung moves to Paris.

In 1929 in Paris, Hartung meets and falls in love with the Norwegian painter, Anna-Eva Bergman; they marry a few months later. Between 1929 and 1932 the couple live in Dresden, France and Norway.

Bergman and Hartung in Leucate, 1929 [photographer unknown]

After a brief return to Germany in 1935, where Hartung is subjected to Nazi surveillance and interrogation, the couple again settle in Paris. There, Hartung exhibits regularly at the Salon des Surindépendants (1935, 1937) and becomes acquainted with artists including Alexander Calder, Julio González, Wassily Kandinsky and Joan Miró. During this period, Hartung spontane­ ously executes small works on paper, which he grids up into oils on canvas, a technique he will continue to use until the late 1950s [p. 19].

In 1937, Christian Zervos organises Hartung’s first major group show at the Jeu de Paume, Paris. In 1938, Hartung participates in the anti-Nazi exhibition, ‘Twentieth-Cen­ tury German Art’ at the New Burlington Galleries, Lon­ don. The same year, Hartung divorces Bergman and in 1939 marries Roberta González, daughter of the sculptor Julio. They live in Paris.

1940s After the outbreak of the Second World War, Hartung serves in the French Foreign Legion (1939–1940), and later in the Free French (1943–1944). Gravely wounded, one of his legs is amputated.

In 1945, Hartung returns to Paris and resumes painting.

He is awarded French citizenship in 1946. In 1947, Galerie Lydia Conti organises Hartung’s first solo exhibition in Paris and Alain Resnais’ 13-minute documentary Visite à Hans Hartung is released. The film shows Hartung drawing, painting and making sculptures in his studio.

1950s In 1952, Hartung and Bergman again cross paths and resume their relationship; Hartung divorces González and remarries Bergman in 1957.

81

The 1950s mark international recognition of Hartung’s work. His paintings are included in the group show ‘Advancing French Art’, organised by the dealer Louis Carré in 1951, which toured North America, and in ‘Younger European Painters: A Selection’ at the Solo­ mon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1953). In 1952, Hartung’s first museum retrospective is held at the Kunsthalle Basel and in 1956 he is awarded the Eu­ rope-Africa Guggenheim International Award.

Starting in 1954, on a beach in the Côte d’Azur, Hartung makes his first large-scale thematic photographic series, ‘Les Pierres’, portraits of small stones that have anthropomorphic or zoomorphic features. Taken from close by and slightly below, the photographs give the stones monumental proportions. Some of their titles allude to sculptors with whom Hartung was close: Tete à la Gonzalez, in reference to Julio, his father-in-law.

With construction of Hartung’s studio in la rue Gauguet, Paris complete, the artist moves there in 1959.

The olive grove in Antibes that Hartung and Bergman purchased in 1960

1960s Both personally and artistically, 1960 is an important year for Hartung. He wins the Gran Premio for Painting at the Venice Biennale and his photographs are pub­ lished and discussed in the renowned photography magazine Camera [French edition, No. 8, August 1960].

The same year, Hartung and Bergman buy an ancient olive grove in Antibes and start to design a villa and studios there.

In the early 1960s, Hartung continues to experi­ment with photography. He produces contact sheets

Catalogue of tools, 1973 [photograph Atelier Hartung]

82

comprising two, three and even four successive neg­ atives. These sequential patterns translate to his can­ vases, where we notice extended, often horizontal, rectangular formats with several distinct sections. The artist also enters an era of technological innovation producing multiple painting tools, from metal combs to air-spray-guns, that trace and mimic the light effects and textures captured by his photographs. Hartung continues to paint with unusual, self-made tools for the remainder of his life.

In 1967, Hartung wins honorary prize at the VII Inter­ national Engraving exhibition in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia and in 1968 is awarded Commander of the Legion of Honour, France. That year he makes a fourth trip to New York, where he takes a large number of photographs with a Leicaflex camera. This time, Hartung uses the city’s linear architectural forms to compose abstract images in which space is organised by interlocking geometric planes.

A large-scale retrospective of the artist’s painting is held at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris in 1969.

1970s Hartung is awarded le Grand Prix des Beaux-Arts, Paris in 1970 and in 1971 he has a solo exhibition at the Maeght Foundation, Saint Paul de Vence.

In 1973, art historian Jean Clair publishes Chroniques de l’art Vivant, in which he parallels Hartung’s photograph­ ic practice with Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machines and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ violin playing.

After five years of construction, in 1973, Hartung and Bergman move to ‘Champ des Oliviers’. From this moment onwards, Hartung’s photography reflects his love for their new home. Capturing the textures of his surroundings, he photographs the shadows of the centuries-old olives and pines on the villa walls, made more intense by the Mediterranean light, and serpen­ tine reflections on the surface of the swimming pool.

Hartung working with his painting tools in Antibes, 1975 [photographer François Walch]

In 1964, Hartung takes several important trips. At the invitation of the Carnegie Institute, he visits the United States for the first time and photographs light effects at night, capturing their movement with long exposures.

Hartung and Bergman also travel to Norway and the North Cape in 1964. With his Minox and Rollei cameras, Hartung takes more than 1,000 photographs of this journey, describing them as ‘a second memory’. At the North Cape, Hartung shoots the stark contrasts be­ tween the black of the earth and the white of the snow, echoing these in his paintings of the period.

83

On a trip to Tokyo in 1966, undertaken at the initiative of UNESCO, Hartung flies over the North Pole. During the long flight, Hartung satisfies his fascination for the skies and takes hundreds of photographs of the ex­ traordinary effects of light, sky and earth as seen from the air. He is particularly interested in the abstraction invoked by the high altitude, and the hazy and grainy effect of the clouds with their shifting solid and transparent appearance.

Champ des Oliviers, Antibes, 1976 [photographer André Villers]

Hartung’s thematic interests: ‘above the clouds’, ‘heads and legs’, ‘windows’, ‘basements under construction’, ‘cracks in the tar’, ‘foliage’ and ‘alien arrival’. Also in 1982, a permanent room dedicated to Hartung’s painting is inaugurated at the Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, Munich.

Hartrung is awarded the German Cross of Merit in 1984 and in 1988 he is elevated to the rank of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, France.

Champ des Oliviers, Antibes, 1976 [photographer André Villers]

Skira publishes Un monde ignore vu par Hans Hartung, which presents Hartung’s Les Pierres photographic series of small stones alongside poems by Jean Tardieu, in 1974.

A retrospective of Hartung’s paintings tours to Wallraf Museum, Cologne, Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and Städ­ tische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich from 1975 to 1976. He has a solo exhibition of recent work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 1975.

Hartung becomes a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Paris in 1977. Also that year, ‘Hartung Photographe’, the first exhibition dedicated to Hartung’s photographic production, takes place in 1977 at Le Cercle Noroit, Arras, curated by Daniel Abadie. Even though Hartung had been taking photographs his en­ tire life, he is 73 years old when he finally exhibits them.

This is followed in 1979 with ‘The Photographs of Hans Hartung’ at the Musée Nicéphore, Chalon-sur-Saôn.

Confined to a wheelchair since 1986, Hartung explores his identity through self-portraits, with particular focus on the shadows and reflections made by his chair’s spokes. Confronted with worsening health, Hartung perfects his sulfateuse spray technique. Although he had painted with compressed-air-spray-guns since the 1960s, their large metal canisters were heavy and unwieldy. By contrast, with the sulfateuse sprayer – a device often used by gardeners – the canister could be left on the ground. All Hartung had to hold was the light wand of the spraying rod. With this greater physical freedom, Hartung produces paintings characterised by fine mists and scattered droplets of paint, recalling the hazy clouds and bursts of light he had photographed 20 years previously.

Anna-Eva Bergman dies on 24 July 1987 and Hartung passes away two years later, on 7 December 1989. True to the artists’ wishes, the Fondation Hartung-Bergman is established at ‘Champ des Oliviers’ in 1994.

1980s In 1980, Hartung has a solo exhibition of paintings at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris and an exhibition of his photographs, ‘Photographies Hans Hartung’, opens at Le Château d’Eau, Toulouse.

An interview of Hartung discussing his photographic practice is published in Le Nouvel Observateur in 1981; he wins the Austrian Oskar Kokoschka Prize in the same year.

Several further important exhibitions dedicated to Hartung’s photography take place in the 1980s. From 1981 to 1982, they are displayed alongside his paintings and drawings in ‘Hans Hartung, Malerei, Zeichnung, Fotografie’ at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, Munich. In 1982, he is given a major photographic retrospective, ‘Hans Hartung, Photo­ graphe’, at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. 135 prints are included in the exhibition, their titles reflecting

Grand autoportrait sur fauteuil (Leica–338) 1984

84

Hartung working with his sulfateuse spray gun in Antibes, 1989

In addition to paintings, drawings and archive material, over 35,000 of Hartung’s photographic negatives and prints are held by the Fondation, only a fraction of which the artist developed. Those the artist printed he organ­ ised in numerous albums, arranged both chronologically and thematically, demonstrating the tremendous value he ascribed to them.

‘Hans Hartung and Photography’, Museum Für Gegen­ wartskunst, Siegen, 2016 ‘A Constant Storm’, Perrotin, New York, 2018 ‘Hans Hartung: La fabrique du geste’, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, 2019–2020

Numerous posthumous exhibitions of Hartung’s work have been organised; those notable for including his photography are: ‘Hans Hartung: Spontaneous Calculation. Paintings, Photographs, Film’, Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig and Kunsthalle, Kiel, 2007–2008 85

‘Photographies de Hans Hartung’, Festival Photo Saint Germain des Prés, Galerie Antoine Laurentin, 2013

Following spread: Untitled 1970

PAINTINGS

PU–27 1950 oil and pastel on paper, 48.6 x 72 cm [ p. 24 ] T1947–47 1947 oil on canvas, 97 x 130 cm [ pp. 12–15 ]

T1955–23a 1955 oil on canvas, 73 x 57 cm [ p. 19 ]

T1957–4 1957 oil on canvas, 80 x 56 cm [ p. 25 ]

Composition 1952 oil, ink and pastel on paper, 48.5 x 72 cm [ p. 22 ] T1963–H42 1963 vinyl on canvas, 180 x 142 cm [ pp. 31–33 ]

P1952–12 1952 oil, ink and pastel on paper, 48.5 x 72 cm [ p. 23 ]

T1963–R23 1963 acrylic on canvas, 102 x 130 cm [ p. 35 ]

88

T1962–L48 1962 vinyl on canvas, 100 x 162 cm [ pp. 36–37, 39 ]

T1989–N3 1989 acrylic on canvas, 130 x 162 cm [ pp. 58–60 ]

T1989–L16 1989 acrylic on canvas, 180 x 142 cm [ p. 71 ]

t

T1982–R18 1982 acrylic on canvas, 180 x 111 cm [ pp. 43–45 ]

T1989–E41 1989 acrylic on canvas, 146 x 114 cm [ pp. 63–65 ]

T1989–E29 1989 acrylic on canvas, 180 x 180 cm [ pp. 1, 75–77 ]

T1983–E34 1983 acrylic on panel, 100 x 162 cm [ pp. 48–49 ] T1989–A12 1989 acrylic on canvas, 146 x 114 cm [ p. 67 ]

89

T1989–L1 1989 acrylic on canvas, 92 x 65 cm [ p. 57 ]

All paintings © Waddington Custot, © Hans Hartung / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2022

PHOTOGRAPHS

Le trou noir (Minox) 1962 gelatin silver print, 18 x 24 cm [ pp. 4–5 ]

Grattage 1932 print taken from painted photographic glass plate, 9 x 12 cm [ p. 10 ]

Untitled 1932 print taken from painted photographic glass plate, 9 x 12 cm [ p. 10 ]

Untitled 1932 print taken from painted photographic glass plate, 9 x 12 cm [ p. 11 ]

Untitled 1932 print taken from painted photographic glass plate, 17 x 23 cm [ p. 17 ]

Untitled (Leica) 1959 gelatin silver print, 16 x 23 cm [ pp. 20–21 ]

Les Baux (Leica) 1959 gelatin silver print, 16 x 24 cm [ p. 30 ]

Untitled (Leica) 1959 gelatin silver print, 15 x 23 cm [ p. 34 ]

Untitled (Leica) 1959 gelatin silver print, 15 x 24 cm [ p. 34 ]

Jeu de lumière (Minox) 1970 gelatin silver print, 16 x 24 cm [ pp. 40–41 ]

Untitled (Minox) 1982 gelatin silver print, 18 x 24 cm [ p. 46 ]

Feuillage foncé 1969 gelatin silver print, 24 x 18 cm [ p. 47 ]

w

Untitled 1932 print taken from painted photographic glass plate, 17 x 23 cm [ p. 16 ]

Untitled (Leica) 1959 gelatin silver print, 15 x 23 cm [ p. 34 ]

Untitled 1974 gelatin silver print, 17 x 24 cm [ p. 54 ]

90

Untitled (Minox) 1974 gelatin silver print, 18 x 24 cm [ p. 54 ]

Untitled (Minox) 1964 gelatin silver print, 17 x 23 cm [ p. 78 ] Alphalte sur le toit de la maison, Antibes (Leica) 1982 gelatin silver print, 23 x 17 cm [ p. 68 ]

Untitled (Leica) 1968 gelatin silver print, 18 x 24 cm [ p. 79 ]

Untitled 1969 gelatin silver print, 18 x 24 cm [ p. 55 ]

Fissures dans le goudron (Leica) 1974 gelatin silver print, 24 x 16 cm [ p. 69 ]

Untitled 1970 gelatin silver print, 18 x 24 cm [ pp. 86–87 ] Filets à St. Nazaré, Portugal 1970 gelatin silver print, 24 x 18 cm [ p. 61 ] Eclair 1966 gelatin silver print, 18 x 24 cm [ pp. 72–73 ]

Lumière horizontale (Minox) 1980 gelatin silver print, 24 x 18 cm [ pp. 94–95 ]

Traînées, Antibes 1976 gelatin silver print, 24 x 18 cm [ p. 66 ]

91

Untitled (Leica) 1969 gelatin silver print, 18 x 24 cm [ p. 78 ]

All photographs © Courtesy Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman & Perrotin

IMAGE CREDITS p. 1: Waddington Custot, London © Hans Hartung / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2022

p. 53: Courtesy Fondation Hartung-Bergman pp. 54–55: Courtesy Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman & Perrotin

p. 2: Courtesy Fondation Hartung-Bergman

pp. 57–60: Waddington Custot, London © Hans Hartung / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2022

pp. 4–5: Courtesy Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman & Perrotin

p. 61: Courtesy Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman & Perrotin

pp. 6–9: Courtesy Fondation HartungBergman

pp. 63–65: Waddington Custot, London © Hans Hartung / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2022

pp. 10–11: Courtesy Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman & Perrotin pp. 12–15: Waddington Custot, London © Hans Hartung / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2022 pp. 16–17: Courtesy Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman & Perrotin p. 19: Waddington Custot, London © Hans Hartung / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2022 pp. 20–21: Courtesy Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman & Perrotin pp. 22–25: Waddington Custot, London © Hans Hartung / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2022 p. 26: Courtesy Fondation Hartung-Bergman p. 30: Courtesy Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman & Perrotin pp. 31–33: Waddington Custot, London © Hans Hartung / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2022 p. 34: Courtesy Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman & Perrotin pp. 35–39: Waddington Custot, London © Hans Hartung / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2022 pp. 40–41: Courtesy Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman & Perrotin pp. 43–45: Waddington Custot, London © Hans Hartung / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2022 pp. 46–47: Courtesy Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman & Perrotin pp. 48–49: Waddington Custot, London © Hans Hartung / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2022

p. 66: Courtesy Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman & Perrotin p. 67: Waddington Custot, London © Hans Hartung / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2022 pp. 68–69: Courtesy Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman & Perrotin p. 71: Waddington Custot, London © Hans Hartung / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2022 pp. 72–73: Courtesy Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman & Perrotin pp. 75–77: Waddington Custot, London © Hans Hartung / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2022 pp. 78–79: Courtesy Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman & Perrotin pp. 80–82: Courtesy Fondation HartungBergman p. 82 (b): Photo François Walch, Courtesy Fondation Hartung-Bergman and DACS, London, 2022 p. 83: Photo André Villers, Courtesy Fondation Hartung-Bergman and DACS, London, 2022 p. 84: Courtesy Fondation Hartung-Bergman p. 85: Photo André Villers, Courtesy Fondation Hartung-Bergman and DACS, London, 2022 pp. 86–87: Courtesy Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman & Perrotin pp. 94–95: Courtesy Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman & Perrotin Unless otherwise stated, all photographs and paintings are by Hans Hartung.

p. 51: Courtesy Fondation Hartung-Bergman p. 52: Photo Harry Shunk. Shunk-Kender Archives. Courtesy Fondation HartungBergman and Getty Research Institute

92

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS AUSTRALIA National Gallery of Australia, Canberra AUSTRIA Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts, Vienna Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna BELGIUM Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Antwerpen Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels BRAZIL Museu da Universidade, Sâo Paulo Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro FRANCE Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, Paris Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence Fonds Départemental d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Créteil Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Marseille Musée Cantini, Marseille Musée d’Art Contemporain, Dunkerque Musée d’Art et d’Industrie, Saint-Étienne Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris Musée d’Art Moderne, Strasbourg Musée de Châteauroux, Châteauroux Musée de Peinture et de Sculpture, Grenoble Musée des Augustins, Toulouse Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon Musée Fabre, Montpellier Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence Musée Municipal, Saint-Paul-de Vence Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône Musée Picasso, Antibes Musée Princeteau, Libourne Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille

93

GERMANY Akademie der Künste, Berlin Foundation Domnick, Nürtingen Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg Heimatmuseum der Stadt Witten, Witten Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf Kunsthalle, Bremen Museum Folkwang, Essen Museum Ludwig, Cologne Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin Pfalzgalerie, Kaiserslautern Schleswig-Holsteinisches Landesmuseum, Schleswig Sprengel Museum, Hannover Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemâldegalerie Neue Meister, Dresden Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kupferstichkabinet, Dresden Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, Munich

Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart Stâdtisches Kunsthalle, Mannheim Stâdtisches Kunstmuseum, Bonn Stâdtisches Museum Simonstift, Trier Suermondt-Ludwig Museum, Aachen Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Kôln Wilhelm-Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen Wilhelm-Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg

BIBLIOGRAPHY For more information on the relationship between Hartung’s paintings and his photographic practice we recommend the following publications:

ICELAND Listasafn íslands (National Gallery of Iceland), Reykjavík

Selbstportrait, Hans Hartung, Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 1981. Original French edition by Éditions Grasset, 1976. Translation

by Shane Anderson

ITALY Collezione Vaticana d’Arte Religiosa Moderna, Roma

Photographies Hans Hartung, Le Château d’Eau, Toulouse: Galerie Municipale du Château d’Eau, 1980

JAPAN The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura The Museum of Modern Art, Toyama The Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki

Hans Hartung, Photographe, Centre George Pompidou, Paris: Musée National D’Art Moderne/Centre Georges Pompidou, 1980

KENYA Kenya National Museum, Nairobi MACEDONIA Musée d’Art Contemporain, Skopje MEXICO Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City NORWAY Sonja Henie-Niels Onstad Foundations, Hôvikkoden NETHERLANDS Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven SWEDEN Moderna Museet, Stockholm SWITZERLAND Kunstmuseum, Basel Kunsthaus, Zurich SPAIN Reina Sofia, Madrid UK City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham Tate Collection, London The Courtauld Institute, London USA The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Canton Museum of Art, OH Cleveland Museum of Art, OH De Young, San Francisco, CA Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, MA Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, MA Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY

Hans Hartung, Malerei, Zeichnung, Photographie, Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Berlin: Kunstbuch, 1981 Hans Hartung Photographe: La légende d’une oeuvre, Jacques Damez, Brussels: La Lettre Volée, 2003 Hans Hartung. Au commencement était la foudre, Amnon Barzel and Cristiano Isnardi, Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2007 Hartung und die Fotografie /et la photographie, Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, Munich: Hirmer, 2016 Hartung Nouvelle Vague. De Resnais ver Rohmer, Pauline Mari, Mons: Les presses du réel /Dedalus, 2019 Hans Hartung – la fabrique du geste, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris: Paris-Musée, 2019

Published alongside the exhibition

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

HANS HARTUNG Painter • Photographer

This timely exhibition provides the first opportunity for British audiences to view Hartung’s photographs.

Waddington Custot 11 Cork Street London W1S 3LT

Stéphane Custot would like to thank the team at Waddington Custot for their help mounting this exhibition, which celebrates his years of interest in the work of Hans Hartung.

22 April – 1 July 2022 First published in the United Kingdom in 2022 by Waddington Custot. © Waddington Custot, London, Hans Hartung / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2022 Texts pp. 8–9: © Louise Malcolm pp. 27–29: © Dr. Lena Fritsch pp. 50–53: © Pauline Mari Paintings © Waddington Custot, Fondation Hartung-Bergman and DACS Photographs © Courtesy Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman & Perrotin

All exhibitions are collaborations and Waddington Custot would like to thank writers Lena Fritsch and Pauline Mari for their insightful contributions and Thomas Schelsser, Margaux Lingua-Nortes and Juliette Persilier for their wide-ranging assistance. Special thanks to the Fondation Hartung-Bergman and Perrotin for their exceptional support to Waddington Custot’s exhibition ‘Hans Hartung: Painter • Photographer’.

Special thanks to the Fondation Hartung-Bergman and Perrotin for their exceptional support for this exhibition.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or other information storage and retrieval systems, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Edited Louise Malcolm Design Wolfe Hall Photography Prudence Cuming Associates Image Preparation Dexter Premedia Printed and bound in Belgium

by Albe De Coker ISBN: 978-1-7397005-0-8 To find out more about Waddington Custot publications, please visit waddingtoncustot. com, where you can browse our catalogues and buy any titles that are of interest.

Previous spread: Lumière horizontale (Minox) 1980

Front cover: T1989–E29 1989

Back cover: Eclair 1966