Karl Hartung

Karl Hartung, born in Hamburg in 1908, was one of the most important and successful sculptors in Germany after 1945. He is considered a pioneer of abstraction in sculpture.

After completing his apprenticeship as a wood sculptor, Hartung began his artistic training at the State Academy of Fine and Applied Arts in Hamburg, followed by a study visit to Paris in 1929. In the same year, his works were exhibited for the first time in his home town. In 1935, he settled in Berlin with his wife, the painter Ilse Quast, where his works were created in secret as he was ostracized as a "degenerate artist" due to his abstract formal language. In the 1940s and 50s, he exhibited in Germany and abroad, whereby the works of this period were strongly influenced by Art Informel. In 1950, Hartung was appointed by Karl Hofer to the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts, where he became a professor of sculpture. After Karl Hofer's death, he became chairman of the German Artists' Association in 1955.

Following the approaches of the previous generation, such as Rudolf Belling and Otto Freundlich, Karl Hartung is the earliest German sculptor of abstraction. However, on this path of an absolute formal language detached from the object, he repeatedly approached the figure, above all the human being, generally the "vegetative", as he called it in his titles, ultimately life, nature. He creates numerous female nudes with a high degree of abstraction in flowing surfaces that are nevertheless clearly legible. He also creates heads, figures, animals and, time and again, abstract, but mostly "organic" or "vegetative" forms. Parallel to his sculptures, he creates an extensive body of drawings.

Karl Hartung dies in Berlin in 1967.