PRESSBOOK Hans HARTUNG Modern Painters January 2018 1/1 DATEBOOKThe season’s top picks from all the art capitals NEW YORK Hans Hartung at Perrotin HANS HARTUNG’S STRIKING visual language prefigured developments in Post-War Western painting: abstraction, action painting, and color-field painting. His oeuvre is the focus of an exhibition in the New York space of Galerie Perrotin—which now represents the Hartung Estate—offering the broadest solo presentation since his exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in 1975. “Hans Hartung: A Constant Storm. Works from 1922 to 1989,” on view January 12-February 18, showcases his experimental paintings across 70 works. Two tandem exhibitions are on view at Simon Lee Gallery in London and Nahmad Contemporary in New York. Later in 2018, the Kunstmuseum N IN I T T O Bonn will organize a solo exhibition of O R Hartung’s work. R rr The artist was born in Leipzig, Germany SY PE E ESY PE T in 1904 into a bourgeois Protestant milieu. In R rt the 1920s, he studied at the Kunstakademie /COU N N/COU in Leipzig, and the Kunstakademie in R R Dresden. Having encountered French O E D E DO Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism, he R R headed for Paris and enrolled in the atelier of LAI O: C O: CLAI André Lhote. In 1935, Hartung fled the Nazi T T O O regime and moved to France definitively. H H During World War II, he joined the Foreign S 2018 P S 2018 Legion; he lost a leg in battle,and was I P IS 2018 R R awarded the Croix de la Guerre. He was then , PA P PA P, naturalized as a French citizen. G A AG D D A Chronologically examining the artist’s A evolution across seven decades, the exhibition NG/ NG/ U UNG/ T R rt T1962-R13, 1962 Vinylic paint on canvas 180 × 111 cm/ 70 7/8 × 43 11/16 in ©HANS HA ©HANS HA 126 MODERN PAINTERS JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2018 BLOUINARTINFO.COM 01_MP_Datebook.indd 126 04/01/18 3:28 PM ©HANS HArtUNG/ ADAGP, PARIS 2018 PHOTO: CLAIRE DORN/COUrtESY PErrOTIN 01_MP_Datebook.indd 127 ©HANS HARTUNG/ ADAGP, PARIS 2018 PHOTO: CLAIRE DORN/COURTESY PERROTIN 1 T1988-R46, 1988 A 54 x 250cm/ x98 7/16in 60 5/8 c rylic on canvas/ BLOUINARTINFO.CO M JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2018 JANUARY-FEBRUARY MOD PAINT N E R E R 04/01/18 3:28PM S 127 ONN 2016 B , T -KUNS D IL B G / V R NE tt Ü B EA dr N A NGELES. © A OS L Y, Y, R ALLE G Y K T1980-K5, 1980 Acrylic on canvas ANS 185 × 300cm/ 72 13/16 × 118 1/8 in rd KO D I V DA starts with his 1920s abstract works. “My ink canvas) to atmospheric sci-fi dystopias Pierre Encrevé—his gestural outbursts as a D drawings during my school years… had a (“T1971-R30,“ 1971, in acrylic on canvas). His means of “translating something inside.” In ON AN decisive influence on my whole life as an titles, composed of classifying markers (“T” the text “A Constant Storm,”Matthieu D E R artist,” Hartung wrote in his memoirs. (He forcanvases, “P” for works on paper, followed Poirier, who curated the Perrotin show, ON L deemed his approach “tachisme.”) Up until by year and number) were a distinctive noted: “Hartung’s pictorial world is LAI ENS, O: C his death in 1989, he deployed all kinds of choice—not only relative to the artistic rigorously non-figurative and non-narrative,” T O rd H tools to manipulate paint: self-fashioned tendency to use allusive titles to infuse but remarked on the “existential dimension A G brushes; branches pulled from the olive trees potential meanings, but because they convey and the inner dialogue it established between H S 2018 P S 2018 surrounding his Antibes studio with which to none of the exuberance of his style. the expressive power of its graphic lines and I R paint-thrash the canvas; the “tirolienne,” a His vivid palette and tempestuous the airy quality of its colored grounds.” N , PA I P , HOLLYBUS T T G hand-held appliance house painters spatter blotches reveal a turbulent creative act. Hartung once said: “If you’re furious, you O IS A R D R rt onto walls; the “sulfateuse,”used by gardeners Jennifer Mundy described his approach in smack someone in the face. Well, the same A E A to spray herbicide in gardens. “Tate Papers no.9” as “the free cursive goes for painting: the vigorous sign you make PESY th NG/ NG/ E T U T His play on rhythmic forms evokes gestures, the courting of chance,” and a mix is always the expression of something.” Even R R scraggly hairballs (“KP1960-22,“ 1960, in of “delight and foreboding.” Artist Pierre posthumously, his fury is still raw and ESY OF /COU rt pencil, pastel, scratching on paper) to pickup Soulages, who was friends with Hartung, potent. N R ©HANS HA DO sticks (“T1961-H35,“ 1961, in vinyl paint on described—in an interview with art historian — SARAH MOROZ COU 128 MODERN PAINTERS JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2018 BLOUINARTINFO.COM 01_MP_Datebook.indd 128 04/01/18 3:28 PM.