Attorney of the State of Naples
Via A. Diaz, 11 - Naples
Friday 23 March 2012, at 6 pm by Massimo Riposati and Antonio Sapone
The exhibition was created with the contribution of the Campania Region and the assistance of the Special Superintendence for the Historical, Artistic and Ethno-anthropological Heritage and for the Museum Complex of the City of Naples.
The international centrality of the work of Hans Hartung (1904-1989), from his first drawings of 1922 is known to all and has been widely documented in the great exhibitions held, by the Venice Biennale where in 1959 he won the Grand Prix for painting, at the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris in 1968, at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1975 up to the Tate Gallery in London in 1996. The exhibition at the headquarters of the District Attorney of the State of Naples, curated by Massimo Riposati and Antonio Sapone, created in collaboration with the Hartung Foundation of Antibes and with the Polo Museale of Naples, presents 25 masterpieces, all made between 1971 and 1976, and documents in an exemplary way a moment that the artist himself defines: "Since 1970 I have a feeling of renewal. As if a new strength, a new youth have been granted to me ”. It is the first organic exhibition of Hartung's works in Naples and it was decided to bring them to a highly institutionalized place, a tribute from the State Attorney's Office to the city and to the great European artist. "An exhibition dedicated to the works of Hans Hartung of the 70s, silent and discreet, in a particularly significant corner, still unfurnished, on the fourth floor of the Palazzo degli Uffici Finanziari (a true jewel of the architecture of the Twenties, by Marcello Canino ) wants to be - in the words of the District Attorney of Naples Giuseppe Fiengo - a tribute to Naples and its aspiration to place itself "in Europe" ... Finally, a tribute to the Campania Region, which financed the initiative. The President Stefano Caldoro in his letter of adhesion emphasized the "synergistic and collaborative relationship that has been established between the respective institutions" and acknowledged that this relationship "constitutes a truly significant and innovative experience, through which it was concrete affirmation of the constitutional principles of loyal collaboration and subsidiarity ". "It is a sign of respect, - notes Fabrizio Vona, Superintendent of the Special Superintendence for Historical, Artistic and Ethno-anthropological Heritage and for the Museum Complex of the City of Naples - the certification that, for Hartung, the work is not in an exclusive space , as opposed to the rest of the world, but finds its profound meaning in common ground. We like to think that this same feeling of community has prompted the organizers of the exhibition to present it in a space dedicated to the city, and that Naples will be able to grasp its meaning. " Creating harmony from disharmony is Hartung's great challenge, and his whole life will be marked by the search for that rule that will allow him to bring the indispensable disharmonious accents back into a lasting balance. Far from any figurative hypothesis right from the start, Hartung found in the harmonic rule of the golden section the compromise between his design rigor and his innate desire for speed in expression, because Hartung's painting abandons the image but not reality. Undisputed master of lyrical abstraction Hartung, he influenced many of the informal experiences of the immediate postwar period, and can be considered a European artist: German by birth and naturalized French, he lost his leg fighting in the Foreign Legion against Nazism and painfully against his country; he traveled to Italy, crossing it as a boy on a bicycle, married Anna-Eva Bergman, a Norwegian artist in 1929, married the Spanish Roberta Gonzales in 1939 and again, after a second divorce, in 1953 Anna-Eva Bergman, returned to Paris from Norway. Since 1994 his home / studio in Antibes has been the seat of the Hans Hartung and Anna-Eva Bergman Foundation. On the occasion of the inauguration, the actress Gaia Riposati will interpret the “Quaderni dei lighti”, an original performance created starting from Hans Hartung's Autoportrait. CATALOG