THE NAZARETH TAPESTRY, HANS HARTUNG
Hans Hartung (German/French, 1904-1989)
signed in the weave l.r.; abstract black brushwork on orange field, 86.5" by 65"
cloth label sewn to reverse: THE NAZARETH TAPESTRY, HANS HARTUNG "55/1"
2.20 x 1.65 meters 1/4....No.163
In 1964 the first weaving studio in Israel was inaugurated in Nazareth, only to close in 1967 after the Six-Day War. A team of forty artisans created dozens of tapestries woven upon the original sketches of several contemporary masters, such as Hartung, Adolf Gottlieb, Karel Apel, etc. George Goldstein, a pioneer of traditional tapestry weaving in Israel, and the chair of the Nazareth studio, opened a new studio in Jerusalem.
A major 20th c. European artist, Hartung was trained initially as a classical painter, he drifted towards German Expressionism, then to abstraction. In 1932 Hartung fled the Nazi regime in Germany accused of being 'a degenerate' because of his abstract style of painting associated with Cubism. Living in Paris, after the death of his father and divorce from his artist wife Anna-Eva Bergman, his depressed state resulted in a further abstracted style of painting. Hounded by the Gestapo, in 1939 he joined the French Foreign Legion, losing a leg while fighting in North Africa. His style influenced American painters of the Lyrical Abstraction movement in the 1960-70's. In 1945 he became a French citizen. He re-united with Anna-Eva in 1952 and eventually remarried her in 1970. He died in Antibes, France. He was the first artist to be awarded the Austrian Oskar Kokoscka Prize in 1981. In 1980-81 the Musee de la Poste, Paris, exhibited tapestries and woodcuts by Hartung and Anna-Eva Bergman. See the 1963 documentary film by Warren Forma "School of Paris (5 Artists at Work)"
Estimate: $5,000 - $7,000
Realized: $4,500 - Excluding Buyer's Premium
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Lot 189 : THE NAZARETH TAPESTRY, HANS HARTUNG
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