Hans Hartung

24 1953

In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Hans Hartung 1904–1989
Medium: Etching on paper
Dimensions: Image: 378 × 517 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased 1987
Reference: P77200

Display caption

Hartung was acknowledged as one of the leading abstract painters in Paris after the Second World War. His prints relate closely to the thousands of brush and ink drawings that he made in 1953-6. Dynamic compositions emerge from clusters of lines tracing repeated gestures. Hartung believed that these forms were comparable to those in the natural world. He wrote: 'Our organic knowledge, whether it is of the flow of blood or of the force which is in a growing stem, finds its parallel, its equivalent, in what we create.'

Gallery label, August 2004

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Catalogue entry

P77200 24 1953

Drypoint and open-bite 378 × 517 (14 7/8 × 20 3/8) on Arches paper 502 × 667 (19 3/4 × 26 1/4); plate-mark 378 × 517 (14 7/8 × 20 3/8); printed by Lacourière, Paris and published by Berggruen, Paris in an edition of 100; watermark ‘Arches’
Inscribed ‘Hartung’ below image b.r., ‘24/100’ below image b.l., and in another hand ‘Comp 8’ twice along bottom edge
Purchased at Christie's (Grant-in-Aid) 1987
Lit: Old Master, Modern and Contemporary Prints, sale cat., Christie's 20 Oct. 1987 (172, as ‘Komposition 8’)
Repr: Rolf Schmücking, Hans Hartung: Werkverzeichnis der Graphik 1921–1965, Braunschweig 1965, p.53 (another impression)

[no further details]

Published in:
Tate Gallery: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions 1986-88, London 1996