Hans Hartung made pictures out of movement. A sheaf of black strokes leans across a pale field; a knot of lines spins out from a dark centre; a thin diagonal slices through heavy vertical bars. Nothing is depicted, yet every mark records speed and direction. For designers, his work is a lesson in how a single kind of mark, repeated and varied, can carry a whole composition.
Because Hartung died in 1989, his work is still in copyright, and none of the records consulted for this guide at the Met, the Art Institute of Chicago or the Cleveland Museum of Art is flagged public domain or CC0. This guide is therefore text only. It describes works with the museum that holds them and does not reproduce them or suggest that they are free to use. For public domain images by other artists, browse the MGD museum inspiration collection.
Who was Hans Hartung?
The Met gives his biography as “French (born Germany), Leipzig 1904–1989 Antibes”, and the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art also describe him as French, with the Art Institute adding “born Germany”. Published biographies give his birth date as 21 September 1904 and his death as 7 December 1989.
Published accounts say he studied in Leipzig and Dresden in the mid-1920s, settled in Paris later in the decade and married the painter Anna-Eva Bergman in 1929. After the Second World War, in which he served in the French Foreign Legion, he became a French citizen, exhibited in Paris and won the International Grand Prize for painting at the 1960 Venice Biennale. He and Bergman, who had separated before the war, remarried in 1957, and later built a house and studios near Antibes, which is now a foundation named after both artists.
Published accounts place him in the postwar abstraction of Paris, under labels such as lyrical abstraction, Tachisme and Art Informel. For designers, a useful comparison is the American painter Franz Kline, whose black-and-white gestures our guide to Franz Kline covers, and another is the French painter Pierre Soulages, who built light out of black in a very different way; see our guide to Pierre Soulages.
What to look at: the line as an event
Most painters use line to describe edges. Hartung uses it as the subject: each stroke is the trace of an action. Look for four things.
- Bundles, not single lines. His marks rarely appear alone. They come in sheaves of five, ten or twenty strokes that run roughly parallel, fan out or cross.
- Speed you can see. Strokes thin out and break at their ends, where the brush or tool lifted. You can tell which way the hand moved, and that direction animates the composition.
- Dark on light. In the prints described below, black or very dark brown marks dominate, set on cream paper, a buff tone or a grey-green field. Colour, when it appears, is a thin accent: a yellow stripe, a touch of blue or green.
- Open space. The marks usually occupy the centre of the sheet with wide margins around them. The empty paper is part of the design; it lets the gesture breathe.
Key works in museum collections
Composition with Black and Green, 1947. The Art Institute of Chicago catalogues this drawing as graphite, pastel and black ink on cream wove paper, about 55 by 72 centimetres. Broad black brush loops sweep across the top of the sheet like a signature written at speed, while thin graphite lines tangle beneath them and a cluster of pale green pastel strokes rises at the left. A small dark rectangle near the centre anchors the whole web of lines. The Met also holds a small untitled oil on canvas of 1949, about 50 by 65 centimetres.
Etchings of 1953. The Art Institute’s Untitled, an etching and aquatint on a plate about 42 by 33 centimetres, sets two groups of black strokes against a warm brown aquatint ground: on the left, curved lines lean and cross like grass in wind; on the right, straight vertical bars stand stiffly side by side. The edition number is pencilled at lower left and the signature at lower right. The Met holds Print 13 and R4, both etching and aquatint; R4 is a long horizontal plate, about 29 by 76 centimetres, nearly three times as wide as it is tall. The Cleveland Museum of Art holds Etching in Black “25”, also 1953.
Colour lithographs, 1952–57. The Art Institute’s Untitled of 1952/53 is a colour lithograph in which heavy black and dark brown vertical bars, crossed by a long thin diagonal, sit on a grey-green field with a single narrow stripe of yellow. The Art Institute’s Untitled of 1957, a colour lithograph on white wove paper, is lighter: a burst of black strokes radiates from a dense lower knot, with a flash of yellow at the upper right, a little blue and a little green. Cleveland holds Noir sur fond gris-vert (black on a grey-green ground) from the same year.
T 1965-E-33, 1965. The Met catalogues this acrylic on canvas at about 154 by 250 centimetres, a format on the scale of a wall. Its title follows his catalogue system: letter, year, number.
Later prints. Cleveland’s untitled lithograph of 1966 is inscribed below the image in graphite “198/200 Hartung”, and its colour lithograph of 1973, made for the journal XX Siècle, carries the printer’s line “Ferdinand Mourlot Impr. Paris” on the back, linking it to Mourlot’s lithography workshop in Paris.
Technique: from brush and ink to industrial paint
The museum records outline his materials. In the 1940s he worked in graphite, pastel, ink and oil; in the 1950s he made etchings with aquatint and colour lithographs; by the mid-1960s he was painting large canvases in acrylic. Published accounts add that in the 1930s to 1950s he often enlarged a small, spontaneous sketch onto a larger canvas with the help of a grid, so the apparent speed of the finished painting was partly planned. From around 1960, the same accounts say, he turned to industrial, acrylic and vinyl paints, scratched into wet paint and, late in life, used spray guns.
In the prints, the techniques do different jobs. Aquatint gives the soft, granular tonal ground; etched lines give crisp, dark strokes over it. In lithography, strokes keep a brush’s drag and broken edges, so the lithographs of 1952–57 look close to drawing. Our guides to etching and lithography explain both processes.
Hans Hartung in print: signature, edition and format
Hartung’s prints follow postwar limited-edition conventions, and these are part of their design. The edition number sits in pencil at lower left, the signature at lower right, both small and well below the image. The image floats on a generous white or cream margin. A tall sheet suits a rising burst of strokes; the long horizontal plate of R4 suits a sequence of marks read left to right, almost like a line of writing.
How designers can borrow Hartung’s ideas
You cannot use his images, but you can learn from his methods.
- Build a brand mark from one gesture. Record a single brush or marker stroke, then repeat and vary it to make a family: a bundle for a hero image, a single stroke for an icon, a fragment for a divider.
- Use direction as hierarchy. A sheaf of strokes leaning toward a headline will move the eye there faster than an arrow. Keep all strokes travelling one way.
- Keep colour as an accent. Let black or a deep brown carry the composition and add one narrow stripe of a bright colour. Test a palette with the MGD colour palette generator: try a near-black, a warm paper tone and one yellow.
- Plan the spontaneity. Like his enlarged sketches, draw dozens of small gestures quickly, choose the strongest one, then scale it up with care.
- Respect the margin. Give an expressive mark generous empty space and a small, aligned line of credit text below it, as in a signed print.
Frequently asked questions
Who was Hans Hartung?
Hans Hartung was a French painter and printmaker, born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1904 and died in Antibes, France, in 1989, according to the Met. He is known for abstract works built from fast, bundled strokes.
What art movement is Hans Hartung associated with?
Published accounts associate him with postwar abstraction in Paris, described as lyrical abstraction, Tachisme or Art Informel. For a gestural parallel across the Atlantic, look at the black-and-white paintings of Franz Kline.
Where can I see Hans Hartung’s work?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art all hold works by him across drawing, printmaking and painting. A foundation named after Hartung and Anna-Eva Bergman occupies their former house and studios near Antibes.
Are Hans Hartung’s works in the public domain?
No. He died in 1989, so his work remains in copyright, and none of the museum records consulted for this guide is flagged public domain or CC0.
