ANTONI TÀPIES

b. 1923 in Barcelona, Spain

d. 2012 in Barcelona, Spain

 

Antoni Tàpies was a Spanish Catalan painter, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor who became one of the most famous European artists of his generation. A self-taught artist, music lover and bibliophile, Tàpies constantly wrote and reflected on the human condition, his historical situation and artistic practice, particularly on the limits and contradictions of painting.

 

Encouraged by his home environment at an early age, he was interested in cultural and intellectual matters, especially in music and literature. In 1944 he began studying law at Barcelona University while also attending evening classes in drawing. Tàpies produced his first works in thick impasto in 1945, and in 1946 he decided to abandon his studies in order to devote himself entirely to his art. Initially he produced both figurative and abstract works.

 

His early abstract works were generally collage-based paintings on cardboard, often incorporating fragments of newspaper. He introduced a variety of materials generally considered outside the realm of painting such as mixing ground white chalk and pigment into the oil medium, bringing out the textural qualities of paint. It was with works of this type that Tàpies established his international reputation in the late 1950s as one of the most innovative painters associated with European developments such as Art informel and Matter painting.

 

Tàpies was one of the founders in September 1948 of Dau al set, a group influenced by Surrealism and in particular by its dream imagery and automatism. In the late 1960s Tàpies was influenced by Pop art to incorporate objects from his immediate surroundings into his paintings. He often chose these elements for their anthropomorphic connotations.

 

As his work evolved, his extreme sensitivity towards the qualities of different materials he used in his paintings in the 1970s and 80s was put to remarkable use in his extensive production as a printmaker, particularly in etchings and aquatints that stressed the physicality of the inked lines and surfaces.

 

Retrospectives were presented at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris (1973), and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York (1977). In 1990, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies opened in Barcelona. In 1993, he and Cristina Iglesias represented Spain at the Venice Biennale, where his installation was awarded the Golden Lion. In 1984, the artist established the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona to promote the education and exhibition of modern and contemporary art. The foundation remounted one of the first exhibitions at its museum, from 1992, titled Profound Certainty, on view through 2019.

 

Other retrospectives were presented at the Jeu de Paume, Paris (1994); Guggenheim Museum SoHo, New York (1995); and MNCARS, Madrid (2000). From 2004 to 2005, a major international retrospective was organized by the MACBA, Barcelona, travelling worldwide to museums including Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico; Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; and Singapore Art Museum to name a few.