Biographie

1922–2008

Born in Hun­gary in 1922, Simon Han­taï attend­ed the Budapest Acad­e­my of Fine Arts dur­ing 1941. He set­tled in Paris in 1948 when his coun­try fell prey to the Sovi­et Union. Han­taï worked intense­ly, vis­it­ing muse­ums and gal­leries, immers­ing him­self in the rich Parisian cul­tur­al life which was dom­i­nat­ed by Sur­re­al­ism and the reign­ing Post-War Ecole de Paris. In addi­tion, Han­taï embraced Euro­pean Abstrac­tion and Amer­i­can Abstract Expressionism
Han­taï exper­i­ment­ed with dif­fer­ent Sur­re­al­ist tech­niques such as ‘découpage’, ‘col­lage’, ‘grattage’, ‘coulures’ and ‘frois­sage’. He asso­ci­at­ed with Amer­i­can painters such as Sam Fran­cis and Joan Mitchell, who includ­ed him in the group exhi­bi­tion of Young Amer­i­can Paint­ing at gallery ‘Huit’ in Paris in 1950. As a Sur­re­al­ist, Han­taï met with André Bre­ton who was instru­men­tal in Hantaï’s first one-man show in Jan­u­ary 1953 at the spe­cial­ist gallery, ‘L’Étoile scel­lée’ (‘The Sealed Star’). In 1955, Han­taï par­tic­i­pat­ed in the land­mark exhi­bi­tion of Sur­re­al­ism ‘Alice in Won­der­land’.  Dur­ing his sec­ond one-man show at Jean Fournier’s gallery Kle­ber, Han­taï showed ‘auto­mat­ic paint­ing’ in the spir­it of Jack­son Pol­lock and Georges Math­ieu. Thus, Han­taï moved away from Sur­re­al­ism in favour of auto­mat­ic paint­ing in a ges­tur­al style in which the artist must lose a part of him­self. Dur­ing his 1958 one-man show at gallery Kle­ber enti­tled Pein­tures récentes. Sou­venir de l’avenir and his 1959 ret­ro­spec­tive show at gallery Kle­ber enti­tled Simon Han­taï. Pein­tures 1949–1959, Han­taï showed his ges­tur­al paintings

How­ev­er, in his quest for orig­i­nal­i­ty, Han­taï shed all influ­ences and inte­grat­ed writ­ing in two of his large abstracts. These works, dat­ing 1958–1959, were not shown pub­licly until much lat­er. As of 1959, Han­taï devel­oped his unique style of ‘pliage’ by fold­ing or crum­pling the can­vas before the paint is applied. The final paint­ing is revealed when the can­vas is unfold­ed. From 1960 to 1982, Han­taï exe­cut­ed sev­er­al series of paint­ings using dif­fer­ent meth­ods of folding.

Han­taï obtained the French nation­al­i­ty in 1966, and moved with his wife to Meun, in the prox­im­i­ty of Fontainebleau for­est. The impor­tance of his work became recog­nised and in 1967 he was award­ed the ‘Prix de la Fon­da­tion Maeght’, who offered him a one-man show the fol­low­ing year. In 1970, Han­taï had his first one-man show in New York at Gallery Pierre Matisse. In 1976, the ‘Musée d’Art Mod­erne de Paris’ host­ed an impor­tant ret­ro­spec­tive show.

Despite his suc­cess, Han­taï, dis­liked the art mar­ket and decid­ed to quit paint­ing. It was only in 1980 that he returned onto the art scenes of New York and Osa­ka with the large for­mat series enti­tled Tab­u­las II. In 1982 Han­taï rep­re­sent­ed France in the 40th Venice Bien­nale, an expe­ri­ence which led him to with­draw from the art mar­ket a sec­ond time. At the request of his friend philoso­pher, Georges Didi-Huber­man, Han­taï accept­ed to show in 1997, at the exhi­bi­tion L’Empreinte held at the Cen­tre Pom­pi­dou, the destruction/ recon­struc­tion actions he had exe­cut­ed on his own works with the Ital­ian painter Anto­nio Semer­aro. These works which were interred, before being unearthed and recut were called Les Lais­sées. Dur­ing the same year, Han­taï accept­ed that his work was to be the sub­ject of a large ret­ro­spec­tive exhi­bi­tion host­ed in Mun­ster, Ger­many. Sub­se­quent­ly, he retired from the pub­lic eye and passed away in Paris in 2008.