Simon Hantaï (7 December 1922, Biatorbágy,

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

–

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, 12 September 2008; took French nationality in 1966) is a painter generally associated with

abstract art Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th ...

Biography

After studying at the

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

School of Fine Art, he traveled through

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

on foot and moved to France in 1948.

André Breton André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') o ...

wrote the preface to his first exhibition catalogue in Paris, but in 1955 Hantaï broke with the

surrealist Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

group over Breton's refusal to accept any similarity between the surrealist technique of

automatic writing Automatic writing, also called psychography, is a claimed psychic ability allowing a person to produce written words without consciously writing. Practitioners engage in automatic writing by holding a writing instrument and allowing alleged spir ...

and

Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...

's methods of

action painting Action painting, sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical a ...

. A retrospective of his work was held at the

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

in 1976, and in 1982 he represented France at the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

. A representative collection of Hantaï's works is held at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. A Simon Hantaï Retrospective opened at the

on May 22, 2013, with more than 130 works from 1949 to 1990s, and a full color illustrated catalog. His sons are the musicians

Marc Marc or MARC may refer to: People * Marc (given name), people with the first name * Marc (surname), people with the family name Acronyms * MARC standards, a data format used for library cataloging, * MARC Train, a regional commuter rail system o ...

, Jérôme and

Pierre Hantaï Pierre Hantaï (born 28 February 1964, Paris) is a French harpsichordist and conductor. Career The son of painter Simon Hantaï, he discovered the music of Johann Sebastian Bach when he was ten and first heard Gustav Leonhardt's recordings wh ...

Art practice – The folding method

Hantaï began creating pliage paintings in 1960, conceiving of the process as a marriage between Surrealist automatism and the allover gestures of Abstract Expressionism. The technique dominated the work he made during the rest of his career, re-emerging in diverse forms—sometimes as a network of crisp creases of unpainted canvas spanning the composition, and at other times as a monochrome mass manifesting in the center of an unprimed canvas. His technique of "pliage" (folding): the canvas is first folded in various forms, then painted with a brush, and unfolded, leaving apparent blank sections of the canvas interrupted by vibrant splashes of color. The technique was inspired by the marks left folding on his mother’ apron. From 1967 to 1968 he worked on the Meuns series where he studies the theme of the figure. ''Meun'' is the name of a small village in the

Forest of Fontainebleau The forest of Fontainebleau (french: Forêt de Fontainebleau, or ''Forêt de Bière'', meaning "forest of heather") is a mixed deciduous forest lying southeast of Paris, France. It is located primarily in the arrondissement of Fontainebleau ...

where the artist lived starting 1966. Hantaï stated: "It was while working on the Studies that I realized what my true subject was – the resurgence of the ground underneath my painting." In contrast with the Meun (1967–68), the figure, in the Studies (1969), is absorbed and the white detaches from being the background and becomes dynamic. ''Mariales (Cloaks)'' (1960–62) ''Meuns'' (1967–68) ''Etudes (Studies)'' (1969) ''Blancs (the Whites)'' (1973–74) ''Tabulas'' (from 1974) ''Laissées (Leftovers)''(1981–1994)

References

Selected bibliography

New York Times Obituary of Simon Hantaï

* [https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55f9139fe4b09fd619481da6/t/56da3ca6e32140a3346b9977/1457142952515/2010_SH_Hantai-and-Warhol-the-Fate-of-Modern-Art-in-the-Post-Second-WWII.pdf Rodgers, Paul, "Simon Hantaï & Andy Warhol – The Fate of Modern Art in the Post-Second World War Era" 4/1/10.] *Rodgers, Paul, �
The Resurgent Ground: Simon Hantaï
” ''The Modern Aesthetic'', 2017. *Rodgers, Paul,
Pablo Picasso , Simon Hantaï: Drama Shared, Cubism and the Fold
'' 9W Publications, 2020.
Cochran, Samuel, "Simon Hantaï's Abstract Paintings At Paul Kasmin Gallery, Centre Pompidou," ''Architectural Digest,'' 5/7/13.

"Simon Hantaï," ''Time Out New York,'' 4/24/13.

Ostrow, Saul, "Reviews: Simon Hantaï," ''Art in America,'' 9/11/11.

An essay on Hantaï
by art historian Molly Warnock * Warnock, Molly. ''Simon Hantaï and the Reserves of Painting''. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020.
An essay on Hantaï
by

Ben Lerner Benjamin S. Lerner (born February 4, 1979) is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and critic. He has been a Fulbright Scholar, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the National Bo ...

Dominique Fourcade, Isabelle Monod-Fontaine, Alfred Pacquement, Jean Coyner. ''Simon Hantaï'', Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2013.Archives Simon Hantaï

External links

*
Simon Hantaï in the French public collections of modern and contemporary art.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hantai, Simon 1922 births 2008 deaths 20th-century French painters 20th-century French male artists French male painters 21st-century French painters 21st-century French male artists Hungarian painters Hungarian emigrants to France Naturalized citizens of France