Claude Hartmann lives and works in France, dividing his time between Brittany and Paris. In recent years, he has frequently traveled to Greece, where he paints landscapes, people, and fleeting moments. He has held numerous exhibitions, most recently the major solo show in Paris entitled "Returns to Greece", dedicated to the works he created in the country. That exhibition featured 40 paintings and included the publication of a book documenting his travels and artistic journey in Greece. With great joy, Claude Hartmann now returns to Kythera, presenting for the first time in Greece an exhibition-dialogue between the landscapes of Brittany and those of Greece, two regions that serve as enduring sources of inspiration, introspection, and artistic exploration.
The artist shares: “I believe, as Paul Klee said, that art does not aim to reproduce the visible, but to make the invisible visible. Like architecture (which was my first profession), art is about revealing forces, exploring the relationship between inside and outside, transparency, openness, thresholds, shelter, roofs… and the magic of those places where we oscillate between the interior and exterior world. I believe that painting is an attempt to belong, to be present… to bring into the light what at that moment lies in shadow. It is a gesture of offering, a form of resistance to the disappearance of reality. It is an effort to give a face, to expose and express the burning intimacy of beings, shapes, and objects within the landscape; to reassemble another reality; to gaze upon the moving beauty of a shifting boundary — of a 'beyond'. Painting means being both inside and outside. It is a way of being, here and now — contemplative, essential, necessary. I see my paintings as gazes, testimonies, windows, openings to the world… as stories. For me, a painting is more than an image; it is a moment and an homage.”
This exhibition is an invitation to reflect on landscape, memory, space, and the feeling of belonging. Through the coexistence of works born in Brittany and in Greece, the artist offers a visual dialogue between two worlds — and a deeply personal narrative on existence, beauty, and creation.
