Built in the heart of an olive grove, this place of creation designed 50 years ago according to the own plans of Hans Hartung, one of the major representatives of the School of Paris, was until then only accessible to the general public. exceptionally.

It will now be visible three days a week, from May to September, Thomas Schlesser, director of the Hartung-Bergman Foundation, told AFP.

It was in 1973 that Hartung, naturalized French in 1946, and his wife, who also became French, who were then living in Paris, settled in the "Champ des Oliviers", where they intended to design a place of life where each of they could work in a space perfectly suited to their needs.

At the end of a 2 million euro project, a reception building was added to the villa, the park of olive trees was refurbished, with the creation of terraces, and exhibition galleries and screening rooms were created.

Hartung's workshop has been preserved, completely intact.

“The Foundation is also inaugurating an art history research center to welcome historians and art critics in residence,” adds Mr. Schlesser.

Researchers will have access to "a library and an exceptional archive, because Hartung and Bergman archived everything, sketches, letters, photos, press articles", explains the director.

An exhibition room at the villa-workshop of the Franco-German painter Hans Hartung and his Norwegian companion Anna-Eva Bergman, on May 2, 2022 in Antibes Valery HACHE AFP

Among the wealth of the fund, one of the first copies of the "Cahier d'un retour au pays natal", by the Martinican writer and politician Aimé Césaire, a copy dedicated to Hartung.

"Which himself illustrated one of Césaire's works," says Mr. Schlesser again.

Close to Soulages

Born in Germany (Leipzig) in 1904 and died in 1989 in Antibes, Hans Hartung, who had to flee Nazism, had settled in Paris in 1938.

After the war, he quickly became one of the leaders of abstract art with his friends Pierre Soulages and Zao Wou-Ki.

A room in the villa-studio of the Franco-German painter Hans Hartung and his Norwegian companion Anna-Eva Bergman, on May 2, 2022 in Antibes Valery HACHE AFP

Divorced from Anna-Eva Bergman, his wife of Norwegian origin, in 1938, Hartung had found her in 1952. And the two artists had remarried.

Enlisted in France in the Foreign Legion to fight against Hitler, Hartung had lost a leg in the fighting in 1944. "I found his right leg prosthesis while searching the cellar," Schlesser told AFP.

This is now found in "a tomb in the form of a reliquary" with also "the two funeral urns (of the couple) as well as various objects, in a sort of cabinet of curiosities".

Influenced by her compatriot Edvard Munch, Anna-Eva Bergman, for a time an illustrator for the press and journalist, collaborated in the late 1950s with the Galerie de France.

Tools and brushes in a room in the villa-studio of the Franco-German painter Hans Hartung and his Norwegian companion Anna-Eva Bergman, on May 2, 2022 in Antibes Valery HACHE AFP

Then she was going to exhibit all over the world from the 1960s, developing for 25 years a cardinal theme, that of the horizon.

The Foundation plans to present a major temporary exhibition each year dedicated to the work of the couple.

From May 11 to September 30, the inaugural exhibition, "The archives of creation", will constitute "a dive into the secrets" of their inspiration, indicates the director of the foundation.

© 2022 AFP