What art movement was the painter Hans Hartung associated with?
Hans Hartung was a painter associated with the Lyrical Abstraction art movement. As early as 1922, the painter Hans Hartung’s first works of art took form in a series of 33 abstract watercolours. In the following two years, the artist made drawings with red chalk and charcoal on paper. Experimenting with his line, which was free and rhythmic, the painter created his own visual language. During the 1930s, Hartung developed a habit of copying his drawings by transferring them in oil onto the canvas with a squaring technique that he chose to use for economical reasons and continued to use until 1960. He described the approach as his “calculated spontaneity”. Hans Hartung then changed his technique, abandoning squaring and opting to use vinyl paints that dried more quickly. The artist’s new approach allowed him to paint more spontaneously and in larger formats. Hartung also used a scraping technique to scratch into the paint while it was still fresh to reveal its underlying layers—inspired by the engraving process, which involved etching into a metal plate. The German painter used a variety of tools to create his “scratched” works. Hartung began creating large-format paintings with a spray starting in 1966.
Please visit painter Hans Hartung’s dedicated page or the page on Lyrical Abstraction to learn more about this art movement.
