The centerpieces of the Hartung-Bergman Foundation which is open to the public

• After two years of work, the villa-studio of the Franco-German painter Hans Hartung and his Norwegian companion Anna-Eva Bergman is opening to the public for the first time.

• 20 Minutes

  was able to visit the inaugural exhibition,

  The Archives of Creation

  , in preview and presents some of the most emblematic works exhibited there.

They were previously accessible only on a few rare occasions.

During private and well supervised guided tours.

After two years of work to transform the premises into a real museum, the villa and workshops of the artist couple Hartung-Bergman, who died in the late 1980s, open their doors to the public* on Wednesday on the heights of Antibes, in the Alpes-Maritimes.

Designed fifty years ago according to the plans of the Franco-German painter Hans Hartung, these living and working spaces, which he shared with his Norwegian partner Anna-Eva Bergman, have been refurbished and completed with a reception building and a projection room in particular.

In the heart of an impressive olive grove.

20 Minutes

was able to visit the inaugural exhibition,

, which presents some of the most emblematic works of these two major representatives of the School of Paris.

Figures of abstract art.

Selected pieces.

Hans Hartung's workshop, intact for more than two decades

It is the centerpiece of this exhibition.

Everything is there.

Nothing has moved.

The scene has been frozen since his death on December 7, 1989. Below the villa and its swimming pool, Hans Hartung's studio has been preserved as it is.

“Visitors are also asked not to touch anything,” insists Thomas Schlesser, director of the Hartung-Bergman Foundation.

And also not to lean on the walls.

“Works in their own right.

Smeared with drops of paint.

Witnesses to the creative force of the artist.

His sprayers and other garden sulfaters are still there, as is his collection of pigments.

His wheelchair, from which he painted monumental canvases (up to 3 m by 5) thanks to his assistants and zip lines, also stands in the middle of this room bathed in light by large windows.

T1931-1

, Hartung's journey from figurative to abstract

At the end of 1931, Hans Hartung had his first exhibition in Dresden, Germany.

His figurative paintings are mixed with these first four abstract works.

“They testify to his gradual change of course,” explains Juliette Persillier, the curator of the exhibition.

(i.e. the first painting painted that year according to its name, in blue, in the center of the image), an oil on panel of 46 cm by 38, is the first for which he uses his method "of transfer of abstract patterns by squaring”.

A painting meticulously worked from a first spontaneous drawing.

T1958-3

, the beginning of his "webbed" in India ink

It is an oil on canvas of 92 cm by 73 (on the right in the photo).

Not the most impressive format used by Hans Hartung.

But it is this painting, dated 1958, "that he considered his masterpiece", testifies Juliette Persillier.

will have marked the History of art and more particularly of the lyrical abstract "in opposition to the geometric abstract", specifies the attaché of conservation.

These India ink lines deposited on a gray blue background by "large impulsive gestures", these "webbed strokes", the artist will decline them ad infinitum, including on a stamp and on posters.

The

Great

Arithmetic Valley of Anna-Eva Bergman

In her separate studio, the former press illustrator mainly painted very large format.

, as its name suggests, is one of them.

This oil and metal sheet on canvas, 2m by 3m, explores one of the "elementary themes" that Anna-Eva Bergman liked to explore, in the same way as "stone", "fire" or "the 'skyline'.

"Often natural and sometimes mythological concepts", specifies Juliette Persillier.

A work accompanied by a lot of research around the "Golden Number", a proportion where the ratio of the large part to the small part is equal to that of the whole on the large part... Do you follow?

Figures that the artist liked to manipulate, as evidenced by a sketchbook found for this

.

Earth of ocher with golden sky

, the light of the South for a woman of the North

From her installation in Antibes with Hans Hartung in 1973, the Norwegian Anna-Eva Bergman will retain the heavy stormy rains of the south of France, the sea, but above all the light.

With

(acrylic and metal sheet on canvas, 180 cm by 250), it vibrates differently depending on the different parameters.

Viewer's position, natural or artificial lighting… the canvas is never the same.

*Visits from Wednesday to Friday and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., from May to September inclusive.

10 euros or 7 euros at a reduced rate.

At 182 chemin du Valbosquet in Antibes.

By bus (lines 1 and 7 of the Envibus network) or by car, parking nearby.

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