(Leipzig 1904–1989 Antibes)
T 1959–5, 1959, signed, dated Hartung 59, numbered T59–5 on the stretcher, oil on canvas, 65 x 91.5 cm, framed

Photo-Certificate:
Foundation Hans Hartung and Anna-Eva Bergman, Antibes, 11. December 2019, under the number CT HH1437–0

The work will be included in the catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre de Hans Hartung currently prepared by the Hartung Bergman Foundation

Provenance:
Galerie de France, Paris, 1959
Collection Arild Wahlstrøm
Collection Tone Skedsmo and Erik Wahlstrøm
European Private Collection

“The first and most important thing is to remain free, free in each line you undertake, in your ideas and in your political action, in your moral conduct. The artist especially must remain free from all outer restraints.”
Hans Hartung

The German-French painter and graphic artist Hans Hartung is internationally considered one of the most important representatives of the European Informel movement. Informal art is very multifaceted and serves as a collective term for the abstract art of the post-war period after 1945. The organised formal structure as well as the spontaneous act of painting are characteristic of the informal movement.

Hartung's entire oeuvre is also characterised by abstract, non-objective painting. This interplay of light and shadow, structure, texture and airiness would become the formative elements of his later works. His work also includes the non-figurative representation T1959-5, which is composed of a light grey background with a delicate orange coloured surface painted over with broad black brushstrokes. In particular, the broad, dark brushstrokes in the foreground make the motif appear very powerful. The orange shines out from under the dominant black strokes, which merge into a massive colour surface in the foreground.
The pictorial space is composed solely of light, shadow and the contrast between the two. Hans Hartung creates certain forms in his works with which he wants to trigger emotions in the viewer. In its compositional scheme, the work offered here is reminiscent of the depiction of a solar eclipse, in which the moon moves in front of the sun and covers it almost completely, so that it becomes dark.

The variety of lines and strokes that result from the painter’s action on the canvas demonstrate, in a type of ideal diagram, how different emotional moments manifest themselves – in the wide furrows, in the threadlike spirals, in the nervous scratches, in the vertical graphic combinations, in the fantastic arabesques, in the detailed interweavings. A mysterious world composes and decomposes itself along the thread of an infinite skein of conscious and unconscious inspirations. It is the mirror of a soul not withered by reason, sensitive to life’s events, capable at times of breaking down the imperious boundary of solitude.” (G. Marchiori, Continuità di Hartung, 1971)