1960’s Robert Hartman "Thermafax Plane and Clouds" Abstract Oil Painting on Canvas with Collage, Framed

Description

Robert Hartman, Thermafax Plane and Clouds, 1960’s
Canvas with glued-on picture of airplane , 21-3/8 x 17-3/8 in.

This painting … more Robert Hartman, Thermafax Plane and Clouds, 1960’s
Canvas with glued-on picture of airplane , 21-3/8 x 17-3/8 in.

This painting was bought directly from the artist. Robert Hartman was a well established SFBAY area artist. Hartman was friends with other art world luminaries such as Thomas Akawie, Alan Kaprow.

The Diebenkorn influence and dialogue is obvious. Where Diebenkorn was temporarily inspired by the aerial landscape, Hartman made a life long career of aerial photography and painting.

An interesting anecdote about the artist is he once collected small objects that he thought Joseph Cornell might want to have to make an art box with. Cornell accepted the gift, created a work, and then gifted the art work to Robert Hartman.

We want this museum quality work to go to a good home.

From The San Francisco Gate,
Hartman flies high with his artistic breakthrough by Kenneth Baker:

In the entryway to Robert Hartman's small retrospective of aerial photographs at Triangle hang several of his paintings from the 1960s.

Brilliantly colored but delicately executed, they whisper the expressive language that shouts and snarls in the '50s work of Willem de Kooning, Clyfford Still and Franz Kline. Of the existential pain critics once detected in Abstract Expressionism, nothing remains here but the pain Hartman suffered trying to sustain a creative effort untrue to his temperament. In the late '60s, his studio work run aground, Hartman discovered that the abstract compositions he sought were easier found than invented. He gave in to his lifelong love of flying, bought a small plane and began shooting photographs from the air.

The modest complementary surveys of Hartman's work at Triangle and the Oakland Museum show what a breakthrough this was.

Abstraction and description coincide in Hartman's pictures with a seamlessness impossible in painting, though there are frequent reminders of this as a painter's problem. "Rio Vista X" (1998) and "Bent Diagonal" (1998), hung side by side in Oakland, appear to salute the early and late abstract styles of Richard Diebenkorn, a painter known for shuttling between imagery and abstraction.

"Landscape at West Pittsburg" (1993/2000) at Triangle -- a lucky shot from 1,000 feet up -- makes an astonishing pictorial equivalent to Diebenkorn's famous "Cityscape I" (1965).

Both shows contain recent work shot with infrared film, which yields colors startlingly different from what meets the eye.

The added unpredictability of infrared seems to have emboldened Hartman further to find some of the most arresting abstractions he has yet made, such as "Hill Carving, Pittsburg" (1998). Hartman's images draw power not merely from their continual formal surprise but from our shock at what land use has done to the earth and how little of its extent we recognize at ground level.

ART

SOLO FLIGHTS: THE AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHS OF ROBERT HARTMAN: Photographs. Through Jan. 12. Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Streets., Oakland. (510) 238-2200, www.museumca.org. ROBERT HARTMAN: RETROSPECTIVE: Photographs. Through Oct. 26. Triangle Gallery, 47 Kearny St., San Francisco. (415) 392- 1686.

Gallery Paule Anglim is pleased to present its first exhibition of photographs by Bay Area artist Robert Hartman.

Hartman’s aerial photographs capture a unique view of the world, combining elements of abstract composition and some of landscape painting. His inventive adaptation of photography to suit a new concept of a 2-dimensional visual experience has claimed an esteemed place in the historical development of Bay Area Art.

The artist trained in painting and initially practiced and taught a form of realism, later forming his own Abstract Expressionism. An avid pilot since 1946, he eventually synthe-sized his observations from his own Piper “Clipper” plane with his painting practice through the medium of photography. Hartman’s images are realized with a camera as he flies 100 miles/ hour about 1000 ft. above the landscape.

Hartman has lived and maintained both a studio and teaching practice in the Bay Area for many years. He taught for over 30 year at UC Berkeley and has exhibited widely. In 2002 the exhibition “Solo Flights: The Aerial Photographs of Robert Hartman” was presented at the Oakland Museum. In 1986 the innovative program MATRIX at the Berkeley Art Museum featured his photography work.

Hartman’s first presentation at Gallery Paule Anglim will display a group of recent color photographs shot with infrared film. This group of works feature seemingly gestural marks made on the land by man with agriculture and machinery. less