He also lost all his wartime drawings, while Allied bombings destroyed the work he had left behind in Germany.After the war it took a little time for Hartung to become an acclaimed artist. I guess that his popularity increased as his originality faded. A number of later drawings make me feel uneasy; not only because they resemble the work of such famous newcomers as Soulages, but also because they appear to have been deliberately done in preparation for painting. All in all, few modern artists so convince one that experimental abstract drawing is a matter of internal life, not a response to circumstances Talking of circumstances, Hartung re-met Anna-Eva in 1952. They quickly divorced their spouses, remarried and went to Antibes, where I understand they lived happily ever afterwards.Over in the East End, the Whitechapel Open is a weaker show than for many years past, probably because it's the biggest ever of these biannual celebrations Around 100 artists are represented, spread over five sites. Some drawings show Hartung's respect for his father-in-law's work Alas, they are not quite convincing.

Hartung was in hiding with the Gonzales family in the South of France in the latter part of the war After rejoining the Foreign Legion he lost a leg in battle. He would have been a valuable recruit to the New York school and was probably not much of a soldier. A reason for staying in France was that he had married Roberta, the daughter of the sculptor Julio Gonzales. Poverty and ill-health destroyed their marriage and it is significant that Hartung's breakthrough drawings of c1935 were done at a time of personal desperation. At the Tate there are a handful of Hartung paintings, some from this period.

He made them by carefully copying, enlarging and transferring ideas that he had previously expressed, more swiftly, in drawing. This sounds a laborious and perhaps not quite genuine way to make a free abstract painting. But the results work well.With the outbreak of war, Hartung, still a German national, thought of fleeing to America Instead he joined the French Foreign Legion. His genius was for touch and gesture, not measurement.After 1933 it was clear that Hartung and Anna-Eva could not return to Germany. They built themselves a primitive modernist house in Menorca and there painted, more or less in isolation. No doubt this is why he felt equivocal about contemporary French art.