(Re)discovering Simon Hantai, And A Possible Opportunity

Judith H. Dobrzynski's article on Simon Hantaï in her blog for Real Clear Arts. 

Click here for full article 

National Gallery Acquires Simon Hantaï Panting

Art & Design

By CAROL VOGEL

Published: April 5, 2012

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NATIONAL GALLERY ADDITION

Every year at the National Gallery of Art in Washington the trustees and patrons who make up its Collectors Committee provide money for acquisitions of contemporary art. What the curators buy is generally well out of the mainstream. “We don’t want to follow the market or fashions,” said Harry Cooper, the National Gallery’s curator of modern and contemporary art.

This year’s big acquisition is a painting by Simon Hantaï, an artist little known in this country but a major figure in France, where he lived as a recluse until his death in 2008.

He was known for creating “visual silence,” manipulating and creasing his canvases as though they were a textile that could be folded or tied and then painting them. The patterns that emerged once the canvases were unfurled became the art.

Like Pollock, an artist Hantaï admired, Mr. Cooper explained, the works were about the contradictions of order versus randomness; chance versus control.

The National Gallery bought “Étude,” a red and white abstract canvas from the height of Hantaï’s career in 1969.

This is the first of his paintings to enter the gallery’s collection. Mr. Cooper said a retrospective at the Pompidou Center in Paris next year is sure to raise Hantaï’s profile.

“Étude” will go on view in Washington this month.

See below for National Gallery press release and notice in the Washington Post:

National Gallery of Art | Press Office
Simon Hantaï, Etude, 1969, oil on canvas. ... National Gallery of Art made possible the acquisition of Etude (1969) by Simon Hantaï (1922–2008), from his series ...
www.nga.gov/press/2012/acqui_collcomm_spring.shtm

National Gallery adds Simon Hantai painting and more Warhol Washington Post By Jacqueline Trescott The National Gallery of Art has added its first painting by Simon Hantai, the reclusive abstract artist, and acquired some more Andy ...

More Ado About Painting

Art in America - April 2012

Letter to the Editor - More Ado About Painting

An exchange between Paul Rodgers and Raphael Rubinstein

To read the letter, click here.