Hans Hartung

Hans Hartung was a German-born French painter and one of the leading figures of lyrical abstraction. From a young age, he was fascinated by the speed and spontaneity of line: “In one of my school notebooks, I captured lightning as soon as it appeared, tracing its zigzag before the thunder broke out. They gave me a sense of the speed of the line, the desire to seize the instant, the urgency of spontaneity.” (Autoportrait, Monique Lefebvre, 1976). This passion for immediacy became central to his work, where drawing, gesture, and energy were fused into a unique abstract language.

Profoundly marked by the trauma of World War II and a severe injury that altered his physical capacities, Hartung reinvented his practice with extraordinary resilience. His paintings are defined by incisive, acrobatic gestures — an intensity that prompted Jacques Villeglé to call him an “acrobat artist.” Through constant experimentation with tools, techniques, and formats, Hartung created a body of work that is at once dramatic and timeless. His canvases embody the urgency of gesture and the poetry of abstraction, making him a central figure of 20th-century modernism.