Untitled (T1962-L7) 1962

Hans Hartung made this untitled work in 1962, using gesture and color, and probably a whole lotta intuition! Just imagine the scene when this was created. There's a kind of dance here, a back-and-forth between intention and accident, maybe with some tools he made himself. Look at those dark blues bleeding into lighter shades, and those scratches on the surface—thin, but they really cut through. Hartung lays it bare, doesn’t he? He’s out there on the edge, working out what painting can be. I think about those scratchy lines against the blues, how they almost vibrate, like Cy Twombly's marks. There's a feeling of trying to say something, something raw and immediate. It's like he’s transmitting energy directly onto the canvas, not worrying about being pretty, but being real. Painters are always in conversation with each other, across time. We’re all reaching, trying, and failing, but mostly learning, and then pushing each other further.