4. * AR (25598502/1) HANS HARTUNG (1904-1989) T1951-5 1951 signed and dated 1951 oil on canvas 97 x 146 cm. 38 3/16 x 57 1/2 in. This work is listed in the archives of the Hartung Bergman Foundation and will be included in the Catalogue Raisonné of Hans Hartung, currently being prepared by the Hartung Bergman Foundation, Antibes. Provenance Private collection, Amsterdam Galerie Artcurial, Paris (n°84/363) Private collection, Switzerland (acquired from it) Offered to the current owner in 1985-86 Exhibition Paris, Galerie Ariel, Les années 50, August 1978 Bibliography Pierre Descargues, Hartung, Paris 1977, p. 170, n°134, illustrated in black and white Pierre Daix, Hartung, Paris 1991, p. 195, n°255, illustrated in black and white Beauty is a solitary pleasure that is experienced and spread so far and so deeply within us that the principles that govern it wither away as we contemplate it. Pure emotion, born of a gesture quicker than the thought that gave birth to the painting, presides over the work of Hans Hartung, whose lyrical songs were born in the hushed calm of a student's bedroom. Surrendering early to what was within him, the artist nourished his heart with music (Bach and Beethoven a little later) and visits to museums (where he admired Goya, Rembrandt and Hals), which shaped him. Born of solitary wonder and miraculous affection, art thus entered him, ineffable and free. There is scarcely a painting in which the temperament of an artist who makes no compromises is more assertive, his art capturing fragments of reality at an early stage, while freeing the line from figuration. His works of the 1920s bear the beginnings of the signs, rhythms and curves that were to inhabit his later work, making him the precursor and pioneer of all the informal, gestural, tachist and lyrical movements that were to emerge in the second half of the twentieth century. These early works, which had only been shown confidentially in 1956 at the Craven gallery, were published a few years later in a book by Will Grohmann Hans Hartung Aquarelle 1922, which became the bible for a whole generation of artists. Enrolled at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in 1925-1926, the artist discovered what was being shown in France at the international exhibition held from June to September. Between 1927 and 1932, Hartung explored and devoured multiple paths (Van Gogh for his complicity with nature, the Golden Section for harmony, Cubism for the cleansing of vision), but returned to what was intimate to him once the initiatory journey had been completed. When he returned to Paris in 1934, where he made friends with Hélion, Goetz, Miró, Calder and Mondrian, his impulsive, architectural and limpid works, in which the colour in the material moves, once again took over his canvases. Three years later, the artist sold a work to the famous American collector Albert Eugène Gallatin, which joined the collections of the Museum of Living Art, the first museum of modern art created in the United States. For Hartung, abstraction, like independence, was a frenzy, a call, a glimmer. It is the assault on the battle. From 1947, this unreal graphic style, in which the intuitive and frenetic hand that shaped it can be seen, attracted the attention of Lydia Conti, who revealed it to the public. Leading critics such as Charles Estienne and James Johnson Sweeney devoted major monographs to his work. In 1948, at the 24th Venice Biennale, Hartung's works appeared in two spaces: the French pavilion and the section devoted to Peggy Guggenheim's collection. Hartung was awarded the Grand Prix at the 1960 Venice Biennale. Her success would never be denied. The most sought-after among collectors, his paintings of the 1950s bring to a climax his iconoclasm towards the age-old profession of painting; irreverence, however, leads to an opening towards a new language... Chromatic and gestural, this canvas from 1951 is a dazzling conquest in which the background, like an enchanting mist, is the space in which the painting unfolds. The clarity of this composition, its pure rhythms, are a break in the silence where august and solemn harmony emerges.