It’s like a sliver of blue sky in an ocean of white: Hans Hartung’s swimming pool almost seems like a canvas in the open air. The painter of German origin has chosen the smallest mosaic tile, has carefully composed his harmonics, a quartet of blues. It was there that he practiced swimming, every day, despite his leg being lost in the battles of the Second World War, when, after fleeing the Nazi regime, he had enlisted as a legionnaire.
This article is taken from “Special Edition Le Monde: 80 artists’ houses for the summer”2023. This special issue is on sale in kiosks or on the Internet by visiting the website of our shop.
This dream patio now welcomes visitors. On the whole domain, only the swimming pool will be forbidden to him during his journey. For the rest, this vast villa-workshop is finally revealed in its integrity. Restored in 2022, in all its magnificence, this well-kept secret on the heights of Antibes is now open to the public, three days a week. Behind the high walls hides a jewel of a modernist villa, listed as a 20th century heritagee century.
Maestro of gestural abstraction and figure of the second school of Paris, Hans Hartung (1904-1989) lived there, with his companion Anna-Eva Bergman (1909-1987), also a painter, from the beginning of the 1960s until when he died. They had reconciled in 1957, after a first divorce in 1937. Remarried each on their side, they find themselves united forever in the tranquility of the South. For a decade, they were content with a temporary refuge, before being able to build, in 1973, this haven of peace and whiteness, inspired by the houses of Menorca, in the Balearic Islands, which had sheltered their first love.
A few years after their death, in 1994, the Hartung-Bergman Foundation was created according to the wish expressed during their lifetime by its two owners. Its main function is to promote the influence of their works, in France and abroad, and also to provide an expertise and authentication service, for a long time it remained reserved for researchers. They are always welcome there, within the framework of a biennial program which concerns the two artists, but also ” all their peripheral galaxies », as summarized by Thomas Schlesser, director of the place for ten years. But the public now has access to everything else, from the 1,500 square meters of garden to the workshops.
It was Thomas Schlesser’s wish to share this haven of peace with as many people as possible. ” After having organized the Hartung retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, then that of Bergman in the same museum, after having materialized conferences and publications of the artists, we wanted to launch a new phase of our existence, he explains. Today we dream of our foundation both as a house-utopia and as a house-memory. » After two years of work, and 2 million euros spent, it finally reveals the duel secrets of this couple of extraordinary creators.
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