Simon Hantaï was a major and much admired artist, one whose pliage technique of painting over pre-folded canvas was a unique and idiosyncratic way of exploring colour, texture, chance and absence - strong abstract shapes in deep, vivid colours against a raw canvas became his defining style.
Hantaï insisted that the unpredictability of the outcome achieved through his pliage technique allowed him to “overcome the aesthetic privilege of talent”Gagosian has repeatedly returned to specific studies of the work of this Hungarian-born adopted French artist - in-depth examinations of various aspects of his work which have included the 2019 exhibition “Simon Hantaï: LES NOIRS DU BLANC, LES BLANCS DU NOIR” at the Le Bourget space outside Paris focussing on his black-and-white works, and the 2022 show “Simon Hantaï: Les blancs de la couleur, la couleur du blanc” in New York looking at his combinations of primary and secondary colors.
Continuing in this vein with another take on the great artist’s work, the exhibition currently at the gallery’s Rome location takes a specific look at Hantaï’s use of the colour blue (italian: azzurro).
“For Hantaï, the same pictorial spirituality linked the Blue Period to the altarpieces and frescoes of Giotto, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, and Fra Angelico. Color was the link.” - BaldassariSimon Hantaï: Azzurro is curated by Anne Baldassari and features works from throughout Hantaï’s career. Staging the exhibition in Rome is a nod to the artist’s frequent trips to and through Italy - often undertaken on foot - and the importance of classical painting and Renaissance art in his practice. Though he was in essence an abstract artist, and one who worked with chance as a tool, his career was clearly shaped by a deeply-held appreciation for, and understanding of, the Italian masters he came across in his repeated visits to the country.
The exhibition is presented chronologically, and starts with the 1949 Petit Nu, painted just after Hantaï’s arrival in Paris, all the way to the “last studio” works of 1982-85. In the midst of these remarkable works, in some cases rarely seen, the gallery has installed a monumental centerpiece in the form of an array of the large-scale blue Tabula paintings, produced by the artist in two sessions from 1972-76 and from 1980–82.
Hantaï was a remarkable artist - no less a figure than André Breton wrote the preface to his first exhibition catalogue in Paris in 1953 (perhaps inevitably from both sides though he would go on to break from Breton’s Surrealists), and following decades of the diligent examination of painting, almost thirty years later in 1982 he would represent France at the Venice Biennale. He was however also known to be reclusive and would move himself out of the public gaze (and that of the art world) for extended periods, including for over a decade immediately after his Biennale appearance.
"It was almost necessary to force him to exhibit his work, so loath is he to get caught in the commercial circuit” - BretonThis intensity and seriousness comes across in the works, and similarly in his involvement in many “movements” - the latter serving both as an indicator of other artists’ readiness to acknowledge his work, as well as of his and their inability to bend his output into anything other than what it was.
Born in Hungary in 1922, Hantaï died aged 85 in his adoptive home of Paris in 2008 - “leaving behind a corpus of fractal-like compositions whose surfaces exist in flux between deliberate and arbitrary mark making” - Gagosian.
SIMON HANTAÏ: Azzurro runs from February 2 to March 30, 2024 at Gagosian, Rome - the exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue featuring an essay by its curator Anne Baldassari.
Installation view, Simon Hantaï, CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux, 1981; Hantaï folding a “Tabula”, Meun, 1975, photo: Édouard Boubat; Installation view, © Archives Simon Hantaï/ADAGP, Paris, photo: Matteo D'Eletto, M3 Studio
