Simon HantaïSans Titre
1971
Watercolor on canvas
Monogrammed and dated
33.46 x 28.74 in ( 85 x 73 cm )

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Inquiry - Sans Titre, 1971

This work on canvas is part of the series of watercolors presented by the Fournier gallery in 1971 in Paris. Simon Hantaï whitens the canvas beforehand with a filler, then he crumples and pinches it. The visible parts will be painted in several colors. Once deployed we discover the whites remained in reserve. The artist considers that the works must live, and undergo the onslaught of the time of light, without particular protection and without frames. He will go so far as to bury certain works in his garden, before taking them out and exhibiting them as they are, smeared with dust and organic waste.

“ There emanates from this work an aura of sensitive, sovereign light that is hard not to surrender to with rapture. ”

Alain Delaunois

Artist of Hungarian origin, Simon Hantaï lived in Paris between 1949 and 1959, when he painted surrealist and then gestural works. Some of his paintings carry a wide variety of working techniques such as gluing, rubbing and already folding.

His painting evokes strange anatomies, presenting intertwined forms, tangles of signs and undulations characteristic of this era. Subsequently, he experiments with gestures, scrapings, writing, etc. It was not until the 1960s that he used "folding as a method". Consequently, he paints blindly and provokes chance in the drawing of shapes and the distribution of colors.

From 1973 to 1982, Hantaï produced works he called (Tabulas). Often made in very large format, it presents a network of squares of a single color, impregnated in an irregular manner.

In 2012, there was a large retrospective at the Center Georges Pompidou, which allowed the discovery of mysterious, sensual and spiritual works, from the end of the 1940s, to the last redrawn canvases.