" poul hanmann til minde"den frie udstillingsbygning nov dec 1982by artcritic pierre lubeckerexpressing yourself in short terms is difficult to most people-especially difficult for he who wants to express experiences and observationsin a clear and whole form.poul hanmann conciously used this skill all of his life as a painter. and he wanted to do much.squeamish as an artist and human being but underneath with ardent yet ferocious emotions under a controlled appearancevery sad indeed to have to use the past time- as he died last july.this is his memorial exhibition.poul hanmann never went far away for his motifsHis motifs were limited to Nature and Nude paintings with one or more models..almost ever nude and female.Landscapemotifs derived fromlocal sites.Although most of his pictures took its origin in the countrysideapprox a 100 miles south of copenhagen at "praestoe" and "feddet"the manor estate of "gavnoe"the pictures might as well have taken its motifs from the "PO expanse " or at the expanse surroundings of venice or the tiver loire in france.places where the hot-sun-mist veil everything that might steal the attention of the view out to the mildly mobile horizon.as concerning the models he drew with coal nudes standing like the classical and archaic statues his teacher mr rostrup-boeyesen asked his pupils to draw from the plastercollection of the danish state art museum.In his younger days Mr hanmann co-started the paintersgroup called "boelleblomsten"which had as a program to revive the old and grand figurepaintingwhich they certainly did,working on huge formats: among his contemporaries in this group were the artists e.g. jeppe vontilius, soeren melsom william fridericia and mogens andersen.later on he became a lone walker.which suited him fine often he would paint the models resting or capture a movement og undressing or dressing.this method being the same as that of the painter giersing.the colour blue was soon to be one of poul hanmannns dearest colours-the musical tone in which he tuned his paintings.the chord from which derivedall the hues from the light mistbluedown to the deepest blues of the ocean.he mastered the blue colour tones so masterlyfragile and gentle also in connection with hues of green,grey,black and now and then yellow.and the colour pallette explained his pictorial space,the low halfdistanceof his modelpaintings as well as the landscapepaintings"profound width of distance.the rhythm being always calm,the proportions sentively balanced.evident speech on beauty as hanmann saw it.