Dellupi Arte gallery continues the exhibition cycle centred on informal art with a solo show dedicated to Hans Hartung, presenting a careful selection of paintings produced solely in the 1960s.
The sixties, inaugurated with the assignment of the Grand Premio for Painting at the XXXa Venice Biennale, represent a particularly creative season in Hartung’s artistic research, whereby he uses innovative art techniques, combining lyricism and pictorial imagination.
From 1961 to 1965, Hartung refines the technique of grattage, which consists of “scratching” with various instruments the still fresh painting laid on the canvas painted with blown color. For this production method, Hartung uses new tools, experimenting with common tools and everyday objects such as rollers, brushes, branches and garden racks, but also airbrushes, splashes and compressors.
Scratching, scraping, acting on the canvas, painting, seems to me immediate, spontaneous and simple human activities, the artist affirms. In the exhibited works, the Master declines his poetic vocabulary according to a vivid and vital pictorial language. No sign dominates the canvas but masses of dark color in the tones of black and blue, large forms that evaporate, lose or stretch on wide areas become the medium through which to immortal matter, light and spirit, the driving force of the universe.
The works of Hans Hartung are in the collections of the most important museums in the world, including the Art Institute, Chicago; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco; Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires; Civic Art Gallery of Modern Art, Turin; National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome; Haifa Museum, Haifa; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Vatican Museums, Vatican State; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Reina Sofía National Museum, Madrid; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, London.