Firstly, its title, sober as an inventory number¹T 1946-9 follows the nomenclature established by Hans Hartung for the titles of his artworks. After the letter "T" for “tableau” (painting), comes the year of creation and the work’s number in that year’s chronology. This method aimed to prevent any interpretation before the work was actually seen. still conveys the essentials: the artwork dates from 1946, a decisive year because a pivotal one in Hans Hartung’s life and work. It brought to a close the vicious cycle of violence and hardships endured by the artist in wartime. The recently ended war had not spared him, sending him back to civilian life with his right leg amputated²Operation following a bullet wound to his knee during the attack on Belfort in November 1944. He was awarded the Croix de guerre (War Cross) by the French military for his heroic conduct.. 1946 was also a year of transition when the German painter, who had only just been granted French nationality, rediscovered his appetite for work and met with his first critical successes in galleries³In 1946, Hartung took part in several group exhibitions in Parisian galleries, including those of Denise René and Colette Allendy, where his paintings attracted the attention of art critics Léon Degan, Charles Estienne and Madeleine Rousseau.. Critics praised the lyricism of his painting and understood that it was about to radically transform abstract art within the second School of Paris.

T 1946–9 is an eloquent expression of the artist’s state of mind in the aftermath of the Second World War. The dynamic composition, just like the work’s vigorous execution, mirrors the artist when he says: “My drawings were crossed by twisted, strange, entangled lines, resembling desperate scratches […] it was vehement and rebellious painting. Like myself."⁴Hans Hartung, Autoportrait, compiled by Monique Lefebvre, Paris, Grasset éditions, 1976. The present text is based on the new critical edition by the Fondation Hartung-Bergman, published by Les presses du réel, Dijon, 2016. Large black strokes thus slice across the entire height of the canvas. They have all the immediate energy of the lightning flashes that the young Hartung was already drawing in his school notebooks. These graphic flares fence with other, less emphatic lines spinning around on the azure ground of the canvas. This spasmodic gestural language is tempered by blocks of compact hatching that structure the whole. Their uniform colours and muted tones reinforce the overall impression of restraint. This was dictated by Hans Hartung's perpetual quest for the "right tone that creates harmony"⁵op.cit. p. 128. This requirement came from his admiration for the "clarity of Cubism" ⁶op. cit. p. 125. To attain the "clarity of Cubism", Hartung studied the possibilities of the golden section (or golden ratio). This geometric relationship was popular with the Cubists, who turned it into a method. Hartung used it for the first time in a drawing of 1929. On his in-depth study of it, see op. cit., p. 98 and note 14, pp. 109-110. and from his childhood spent with his musician grandfather. "At home, music was in the very air that we breathed"⁷op.cit. p. 23, recalls Hartung. T 1946-9, with its syncopated rhythms and simple colour harmonies, is an eminently musical composition. With its simultaneously accordant and dissonant notes, it embodies the contrasts and paradoxes of a society that was healing its wounds while once more turning its attention towards the future. In this respect, "no painting seems to us more realistic in spirit than Hartung’s abstract art"⁸Preface to the "Hartung" exhibition catalogue published by the Galerie Lydia Conti, Paris, 1947. This inaugural exhibition was held from 14 February to 8 March 1947. It comprised thirteen paintings, including three dating from 1946., wrote art critic Madeleine Rousseau (1895-1980), on the occasion of the opening of the Galerie Lydia Conti in Paris in 1947.

Two geometric shapes emerge from the interwoven, disorderly lines: a rectangle and a circle. They are there to remind the artist, as well as the viewer, of the coexistence of the order and chaos that govern the universe⁹op.cit. p. 13. In his preface to the critical edition of Autoportrait, Thomas Schlesser underlines in Hartung's work "the obsessive expression of a connection to the dynamic forces of the universe".. T 1946-9, through its balanced lyricism, reflects the dual nature of the artist, both Dionysian and Apollonian. This never-ending struggle between two opposing states gives rise to a unique form of abstraction which appeals above all to sensitivity and pure emotion.

Bertrand Dumas
Curator of the Fine Arts Collection
Fondation Gandur pour l'Art, february 2020