VENERDÌ 12 SETTEMBRE 2025 
This Week in La Gazette Drouot : Hans Hartung, 1971 - The "Liberated Gesture"
A t the dawn of the 1970s, the Franco-German master of abstraction embarked on a new creative phase, in which he experimented with different, yet always highly personal, techniques. T 1971-E7 is a masterly illustration of this new form of artistic expression
By Philippe Dufour
“As for me, I want to remain free. In spirit, in thought, in action. Not to let myself or others confine me.“ It was with these words, recorded in Self-Portrait, his autobiography published in 1976, that Hans Hartung revealed the profound motivations behind one of the most daring artistic works of the 20th century. In fact, from his first abstract watercolors, produced in Dresden in 1922, to the sulphate-coated canvases created in Antibes in 1989, the Franco-German artist achieved his creative independence through a series of formal stages and incessant research, on the fringes of the dominant trends of his time.
With the work presented here, T 1971-E7, dating from the very early 1970s, we enter the last phase of his artistic production, a period that extends up to his death and is marked by a " liberated gesture " - as the organizers of his major retrospective at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris described his work in 2019. The technique used in the creation of this acrylic canvas, in which four large square and semicircular motifs invade the space, calls on large brushes and even rollers, applied with varying degrees of intensity. For other compositions, multi-brushes, spray guns - which he already experimented with in the 1960s - and broom brooms are employed... Hartung does not, however, forget recurring processes, such as scratching away at the still-fresh paint, betrayed here by the scratches on the two upper motifs.
“As for me, I want to remain free. In spirit, in thought, in action. Not to let myself or others confine me.“ It was with these words, recorded in Self-Portrait, his autobiography published in 1976, that Hans Hartung revealed the profound motivations behind one of the most daring artistic works of the 20th century. In fact, from his first abstract watercolors, produced in Dresden in 1922, to the sulphate-coated canvases created in Antibes in 1989, the Franco-German artist achieved his creative independence through a series of formal stages and incessant research, on the fringes of the dominant trends of his time.
With the work presented here, T 1971-E7, dating from the very early 1970s, we enter the last phase of his artistic production, a period that extends up to his death and is marked by a " liberated gesture " - as the organizers of his major retrospective at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris described his work in 2019. The technique used in the creation of this acrylic canvas, in which four large square and semicircular motifs invade the space, calls on large brushes and even rollers, applied with varying degrees of intensity. For other compositions, multi-brushes, spray guns - which he already experimented with in the 1960s - and broom brooms are employed... Hartung does not, however, forget recurring processes, such as scratching away at the still-fresh paint, betrayed here by the scratches on the two upper motifs.
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