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The Esprit of Gestures
Hans Hartung, Informel and Its Impact

30.07.2010 to 10.10.2010

Kupferstichkabinett
Kupferstichkabinett

The theme for this group exhibition was inspired by the donation (brokered by Clemens Fahnemann, Berlin) in April of this year of 213 of Hans Hartung's printed works by the Fondation Hans Hartung & Anna-Eva Bergman in Antibes in the South of France. With this show then, Hartung's role as a printmaker will be honoured for the first time in more than 25 years.

With 605 print works to his name, the artist, (born in Leipzig in 1904 who lived in France from the 1930s until his death in 1989) created a diverse oeuvre of prints that was characterized by permanent change and innovation. Starting with Hartung's impulsive and yet precise sign language of gestural forms, the exhibition moves on to explore the phenomenon of the expressive line in abstract art from 1950 up to the present day. Numerous works by other artists, with their own similarly abstract-expressive pictorial language, form a dialogue with the many lithographs, etchings and woodcuts by Hartung himself. The exhibits range from the time of Art Informel and Abstract Expressionism around 1950 up to and including the present day.

The show includes works by: Wols, Pierre Soulages, Jackson Pollock, Karl Otto Götz, Emil Schumacher, K.R.H. Sonderborg, Salvador Dalí, Günter Brus, Maria Lassnig, Emilio Vedova, Peter Brüning, Cy Twombly, Willem de Kooning, Mark Tobey, Hana Usui, Emil Schreiber, Chris Newman, Gabriele Basch, Katharina Hinsberg, Günther Förg, Damien Hirst and Mark Sheinkman.