Hartung, Hans

Hartung, Hans (1904–1989). German-born abstract painter and printmaker who became a French citizen in 1946. He was born in Leipzig, where he studied philosophy at the University and art at the Academy, continuing his studies at the Academies of Dresden and Munich. In Munich he met Kandinsky and became interested in the work of Marc. From 1926 to 1931 he lived mainly in Paris, then from 1932 to 1934 on the island of Minorca, where he is said to have angered peasants who thought his abstracts were blueprints for a fortress. In 1934 he returned briefly to Germany, but left because of the Nazis and settled in Paris in 1935. During the Second World War he fought in the French Foreign Legion; he was badly wounded in 1944 and had a leg amputated without anaesthetic. After the war he returned to Paris, where he remained based for the rest of his life.

Hartung was an individualist who pursued his own path, unconcerned with fashion and sustained by what he called ‘stubborn staying power'. He had begun painting abstracts in 1922, when he was only 17, and developed a sensuous, freely improvised style that anticipated post-war developments. It was only after the war that he made a reputation and was hailed as one of the pioneers of Art Informel. His fame was at its peak around 1960, in which year he was joint winner of the main painting prize at the Venice Biennale. In some of his paintings the vibrant thick black lines and blotches have a kinship with the work of Franz Kline, but Kline is more brusquely energetic and less subtle. Reviewing an exhibition of Hartung's work at the Tate Gallery, London, in 1996, Frank Whitford wrote: ‘ Hartung spent most of his life in France because he believed his art was more French than German. Yet it is its strikingly German character that makes it more interesting than the abstraction of almost all his French contemporaries. The abrasive, febrile quality of his marks and the brooding, sultry colours beneath and between them produce precarious harmonies that convey a sense of unease and urgency. His images are, in short, intensely expressive.’

Hartung gave his paintings ‘T’ numbers (for toile—French for canvas) instead of titles (T1963—R6, Tate Gallery, London, 1963). He was a prolific draughtsman, often basing his paintings on his drawings, and he also made etchings, lithographs, and (through friendship with Julio González) a few sculptures. In 1929 Hartung married the Norwegian painter Anna-Eva Bergman (1909–87). He divorced her in 1939 and married Roberta González (daughter of Julio), but subsequently he divorced her also and remarried Bergman in 1957.