Richard P. Hartmann  

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Richard P. Hartmann (1935 - 2024) was a doctor and painter and head of the Munich "Institut für Bildsprache und Kunst".

He was the son of the composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann and the nephew of the art painter and art professor at the Munich Academy Adolf Hartmann.

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In 1963, he founded an art gallery in Munich, in his parents' house, in Franz-Joseph-Straße 20, which over the decades became one of the largest galleries for fantasy and surreal art in the federal territory. In his first exhibition, Dr. Hartmann showed works by Hans Bellmer and Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern. Dr. Hartmann presented many other artists in his gallery and at art fairs and also examined this direction of art from the perspective of psychoanalysis. For this reason, he invited prominent persons from the field of psychiatry to the numerous symposiums, published documentaries and organized conferences, lecture series and film screenings. 1967 in his gallery Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Ernst Fuchs and Arnulf Rainer announced the "Pintorarium-Manifesto and the Mannerism-Expert Prof. Dr. Gustav René Hocke defined "neo-mannerism in Europe" in a text in 1971 on the occasion of the exhibition "Mannerism in Art". Dr.Hartmann was involved in the organization of the exhibition "ars phantastica" in the Stein Castle/Nuremberg and in the art club Hannover. His exhibition program included many Austrian fantasies as well as classics of German surrealism, such as Edgar Ende and Mac Zimmermann and his pupil. Since after 1949, a massive dominance of the abstracts in the exhibitions and the art trade, which among other things also from a cultural-political point of view, when THE art of the future was brought to the forefront, the artists of fantastic art were repeatedly pushed to the edge because their pictures did not fit into the ideology of the time. Since Dr. Hartmann was never interested in art fashions, but was interested in the visual language between the conscious and the unconscious in art, his gallery was the focal point for many artists and art enthusiasts who were interested in the fantastical and soulful in art. He initiated the symposium "Loss of the Soul in Modern Art" in 1985 as well as the television discussion "Der Fall der Avantgarde" - The place value of Schönen- with Heinz Friedrich, Prof. Gorsen, Arik Brauer, Ernst Fuchs, Peaceful Kingdom Hundertwasser, Alfred Hrdlicka, Jürgen Claus and Prof. Schurian...... to name a fraction of his activities. I notice the following commonality: The head of the surrealists in Paris was André Breton (1896 - 1966), who, like Dr. Hartmann, was a physician, collector and occasional gallerist, and was also involved in Freud psychoanalysis. Psychoanalyst Lacan also worked in the environment of surrealists, about whom a large exhibition was recently on display at the Centre Pompidou in Metz. Breton found that the unconscious is a source of infinite creativity and freedom and that art and life are inseparable. He saw surrealism as a way for revolutionary change to achieve comprehensive liberation of man on social and individual levels. Dr. Hartmann sought a deeper understanding of the human psyche and the causes of artistic creativity, to which he undertook extensive research and published analyses. Already in his catalog for the 5th anniversary of the gallery, it was determined that the gallery Dr. Hartmann "with many of its bright-sighted businesses, was at the beginning of developments that only later found generally more intense interest in us." " For fantastic art in Germany, but also in Austria, the commitment of Dr. Hartmann was of great importance. Unfortunately, it has to be noted that today galleries and personalities like Dr. Hartmann with similar intention are missing. He deserves our most sincere thanks! What does Dr. Hartmann have to do with the Palatinate? Dr. Hartmann's grandmother, Gertrud Hartmann (1905 - 1963), was the daughter of the hospitality and farmer Karl Schwamm from Klingenmünster in the South Palatinate. In 1968 I went to Munich to the Academy of Fine Arts to see Prof. Mac Zimmermann, in whose workshop Dr. Hartmann came again and again. During one of his visits, he saw my eraser cycle "The Divine Comedy" and was so impressed by it that he signed a contract with me and bought all the erasings from me for several years and displayed them at art fairs. At that time, I lived in Munich in the villa of the youth painter Franz von Stuck, as a janitor, which also housed the Ketterer auction house, the Modern-Art Museum and other galleries. Since Dr. Hartmann had a second gallery in the villa, he made an exhibition with my works there in 1971. In 1972 I organized a symposium on the topic of "Psychiatry and Art" for the Palatine Clinic Landeck in Klingenmünster, to which I invited, among other things, Alfred Hrdlicka and Dr. Hartmann to the Palatine and which was recorded by the Bavarian Television. In 1998, on the occasion of the exhibition "The thread of Ariadne - fantastic and visionary art" I invited Dr. Hartmann to the cultural center HERRENHOF Neustadt-Mußbach to a lecture on "The position of fantastic art in the visual language between the conscious and the unconscious". 1996 I met Dr. Hartmann in the Villa Rolandseck gallery in Remagen, where we founded the CENTER OF FANTASTIC ARTS e.V. with over 50 participants. Dr. Hartmann also loaned me several times from his collection of pictures for the art-imaginär in the HERRENHOF-Mußbach.