Hans Hartung

Explosive, aerial, vitalist: the adjectives that describe Hans Hartung's production in the 1980s are wholly antithetical to what one might expect of an artist's “late period.” Through countless variations and technical experiments—particularly in the use of different paint projectors (airless guns, ziplines, portable sulphate sprayers)—Hartung created works of unprecedented breadth. He combined this methodology with a total freedom of expression that, thanks to his procedural recollection and more than six decades of gestural precision, worked in perfect harmony with what he created throughout his lifetime. The 1980s highlighted the ultimate achievement of his abstraction: liberty of form, maximum energy of the line, associations between accident and virtuoso mastery.