Hans Hartung, born in Leipzig in 1904, is a key figure in European lyrical abstraction. Trained in Germany, influenced by both the Romantic tradition and modernity, he settled in France in 1935.

After fighting in the French Foreign Legion, he developed a body of work based on gesture, speed and intensity of line.

His canvases, animated by scratches, splashes, and bursts of light, convey an inner energy akin to music. Hartung paints the impulse, the tension, the trace of movement within matter. Winner of the Grand Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale in 1960, he remained until his death in 1989 a master of abstract lyricism, where rigor and spontaneity unite in a single burst of brilliance.