Antoni Tàpies
"I often told the fanatics of realism that there is no such thing as realism in art: it only exists in the mind of the observer. Art is a symbol, a thing conjuring up reality in our mental image. That is why I don't see any contradiction between abstract and figurative art either."
Born in 1923, Tàpies would establish a reputation as one of Spain's most important artists during the second half of the 20th century.
In 1948, Tàpies helped to co-found the Dau al Set movement with the poet Joan Brossa. Connected to Surrealism and Dada, it was one of the first major Post-War developments in Spanish art. Tàpies began as a surrealist painter, but soon began to experiment with a more informal aesthetic, working in a style known as pintura matèrica, in which non-artistic materials are incorporated into paintings. In 1953 he became an earlier pioneer of working with mixed media, adding clay and marble dust to his paint and embracing the use of waste paper, string, and rags. During the early 1970s, inspired by the example of Pop art, he also began to add more substantial objects into his paintings, such as fragments of furniture.
Later works embraced a meditative restraint and openness, expanding the vocabulary of abstract art. Writing, or marks indicative of it, was a key element of Tàpies’s practice. Ranging from bold, graffiti-like phrases to almost indecipherable words, letters and numbers layered within the image, these devices suggest the constant presence of the human mind and lead the viewer on a shifting mental journey through the work.
Tàpies had begun to make graphic work as early as 1947, and printmaking would go on to become a profoundly important focus in his development as an artist. Constantly experimenting with the technical possibilities of various print media, he created a substantial body of original prints that expanded upon the unique vocabulary he had developed as a painter.
Tàpies enjoyed critical acclaim during his lifetime, with with solo retrospectives at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.
