Hans Hartung

Hans Hartung (21 September 1904 – 7 December 1989) was a German-French painter, known for his gestural abstract style. He was also a decorated World War II veteran of the Legion d'honneur.

Life Hartung was born in Leipzig, Germany, into an artistic family. He developed an early appreciation of Rembrandt, German painters such as Lovis Corinth, and the Expressionists Oskar Kokoschka and Emil Nolde. In 1924, he enrolled in Leipzig University, where he studied philosophy and art history. He subsequently studied at the Fine Arts academy of Dresden, where he copied the paintings of the masters. The modern French and Spanish works he saw in 1926 at the Internationale Kunstausstellung in Dresden were a revelation to him, In 1957, Hans Hartung was the first painter to receive the Rubens Prize of the City of Siegen.

Hartung's freewheeling abstract paintings set influential precedents for many younger American painters of the 1960s, making him an important forerunner of American Lyrical Abstraction of the 1960s and 1970s. He was featured in the 1963 film documentary School of Paris: (5 Artists at Work) by American filmmaker Warren Forma.

In 1957, Hartung and Anna-Eva Bergman remarried. He died on 7 December 1989, in Antibes, France.

Exhibitions 2012: Hans Hartung Paintings 1960's–1970's, De Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong (February 16 – April 13, 2012) 2017-2018: Hans Hartung (1904-1989) Abstraction: A Human Language, De Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong (November 25, 2017 – January 20, 2018)