Image: Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia, Venice
Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice will present 'The Invisible Chord. Hans Hartung and Music' from 5 May to 13 September 2026, an exhibition dedicated to the relationship between sound and the work of the German-born abstract painter Hans Hartung. The show is curated by Thomas Schlesser, in collaboration with Fondation Hartung-Bergman and Perrotin, and will bring together nearly eighty works, archival materials and an immersive musical accompaniment.
According to the exhibition materials, the project was conceived by Fondation Hartung-Bergman and forms part of the programme linked to the 61st Venice Biennale. The Querini Stampalia describes Hartung’s Venice connection as an important one: the artist received the Biennale’s Grand Prize in 1960, and the new exhibition returns to the city where that recognition took place. The museum and foundation also notes that its own institutional history dates to 1869, when Giovanni Querini Stampalia established the foundation as a place of study, learning and public access.
The exhibition aims to place music at the centre of Hartung’s artistic universe. The source material says the display will trace a landscape of energy, gesture and resonance across the artist’s career, drawing on his lifelong listening habits and his work’s rhythmic and physical qualities. Hartung, who was also a pianist and dancer in his youth, is presented as an artist deeply attached to music, with references ranging from Bach, Händel and Vivaldi to later figures including Lili Boulanger, Pierre Boulez and Philip Glass. The show also points to his interest in more contemporary sounds, naming Pink Floyd among the musical references that shaped the project’s framing.
The exhibition will feature works and documents from across Hartung’s long career, from the 1920s to the end of his life in 1989. The materials highlight his development from early abstract watercolours to later large-scale paintings and experiments with new tools and techniques. The source text stresses that Hartung was never a purely theoretical artist in this area; rather, his relation to music was direct, physical and instinctive, and the exhibition uses that premise to connect musical structure with his painterly language.
The curatorial approach also includes archival evidence from Hartung’s studio practice. Alongside paintings and documents, visitors will see objects from the artist’s workshop, with the exhibition comparing their use to that of musical instruments. The display will include films and archival material that broaden the frame around Hartung’s practice, and the source mentions the participation of cultural mediators to support the visitor experience.
Fondazione Querini Stampalia’s venue information places the exhibition at Palazzo Querini Stampalia in Venice, in the context of a programme that also includes other exhibitions and installations on the foundation’s site. For 'The Invisible Chord. Hans Hartung and Music', however, the verified dates are clear: 5 May to 13 September 2026 at Palazzo Querini Stampalia, Venice. The project is presented there as a focused study of how rhythm, harmony, energy and gesture informed one of abstraction’s major figures.
