Exhibition publication for:
Hans Hartung, Painter • Photographer
Waddington Custot, London
22 April–1 July 2022
“I took photos of everything that interested me in the world: people, clouds, water, mountains, cracks, stains, and all sorts of light and shade effects, which – sometimes – have a more or less direct relationship to my painting.”
For Hans Hartung, photographing everything in his locale was a reflex. And, although celebrated as one of Europe’s foremost abstract painters, it was through photography that Hartung first explored abstraction and recorded the traces of the world which his paintings later sought to capture.
This exhibition and publication provides the first opportunity for UK audiences to view a small selection from the 35,000 photographs that Hartung took in his lifetime. Their display alongside paintings made over four decades illuminates the dynamic cycle in which Hartung used photography to reaffirm his abstract tendencies in painting.
