on foot and moved to France in 1948. André Breton

André Breton

André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....

 wrote the preface to his first exhibition catalogue in Paris, but in 1955 Hantaï broke with the surrealist

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 group over Breton's refusal to accept any similarity between the surrealist technique of automatic writing

Automatic writing

Automatic writing or psychography is writing which the writer states to be produced from a subconscious and/or spiritual source without conscious awareness of the content.-History:...

 and Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock

Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...

's methods of action painting

Action painting

Action painting sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied...

.

In 1960, Hantaï developed his technique of "pliage" (folding): the canvas is folded and scrunched, then doused with colour, and unfolded, leaving apparent blank sections of the canvas interrupted by vibrant splashes of colour. He stated: "The pliage developed out of nothing. It was necessary to simply put myself in the place of someone who had seen nothing... in the place of the canvas. You could fill the folded canvas without knowing where the edge was. You don't know where things stop. You could even go further, and paint with your eyes closed." ("Le pliage ne procédait de rien. Il fallait simplement se mettre dans l'état de ceux qui n'ont encore rien vu; se mettre dans la toile. On pouvait remplir la toile pliée sans savoir où était le bord. On ne sait plus alors où cela s'arrête. On pouvait même aller plus loin et peindre les yeux fermés.")

Starting in 1960, Hantaï ranged his works in series, some very white, others full of colour (subtle shades or vibrant).

• Mariales (Cloaks) (1960-1962)
• Meuns (1967-1968)
• Etudes (Studies) (1969)
• Les Blancs (the Whites) (1973-1974)
• Les Tabulas (from 1974)
• Les Laissees (Leftovers)(1981-1994)

A retrospective of his work was held at the Centre Pompidou in 1976, and in 1982 he represented France at the Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...

.

A representative collection of Hantaï's works is held in the Musée Fabre

Musée Fabre

The Musée Fabre is a museum in the southern French city of Montpellier, capital of the Hérault département.The museum was founded by François-Xavier Fabre, a Montpellier painter, in 1825. Beginning in 2003, the museum underwent a 61.2 million euro renovation, which was completed in January 2007...

, Montpellier

Montpellier

-Neighbourhoods:Since 2001, Montpellier has been divided into seven official neighbourhoods, themselves divided into sub-neighbourhoods. Each of them possesses a neighbourhood council....

.

His sons are the musicians Marc, Jérôme and Pierre Hantaï

Pierre Hantaï

Pierre Hantaï, is a French conductor and harpsichordist. The son of painter Simon Hantaï, he took up the harpsichord at the age of 11 and studied in Paris with the American teacher Arthur Haas followed by two years in Amsterdam with Gustav Leonhardt...

.

External links

An essay on Hantaï by the poet Ben Lerner

Ben Lerner

Benjamin S. Lerner is an American poet, novelist, and critic. He was awarded the Hayden Carruth prize for his cycle of fifty-two sonnets, . In 2004, Library Journal named it one of the year's twelve best books of poetry...