HANS HARTUNG - Biography
Hans Hartung was born in Leipzig in 1904, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig, Munich and Dresden, where in the latter he also held his first exhibition held at the Heinrich Kuhl Gallery. In 1935, having come into open conflict with Nazi authorities, he was forced to leave Germany and took refuge in France, enlisting in the Foreign Legion. Although he began his artistic quest before the war it was only afterwards that he was able to delineate his language more clearly: his painting in fact fell into what was then called "Lyrical Expressionism" although he did not forget the influences of French Surrealism. His canvases, which at first might be reminiscent of American action painting, differed totally from it: in fact, Hartung recorded an almost calligraphic mark on the canvas, where the goal was to visualize one's state of mind. The gesture was nervous and rhythmic, almost always made with dark colors on a light background and the titles of the works the antithesis of emotions.
