On the occasion of the centenary of the artist’s birth, Museu Tàpies presents Antoni Tàpies. The Practice of Art, one of the most important retrospectives ever done on Tàpies.
Antoni Tàpies was a visionary. His way of understanding art —always transcending the symbolism of the work— invites us to reflect deeply, to integrate ourselves into the material that he captured in his paintings and to melt our gaze into them.
Tàpies is one of the greatest representatives of Abstract Expressionism and Informalism in the world. His artistic legacy is extensive and rich, as well as difficult to erase from our memory.
To mark the centenary of his birth, Museu Tàpies presents , which will be the most important exhibition of the year at the museum. It has been curated by Manuel Borja-Villel.
The exhibition reflects a synthesis of the plastic research that Antoni Tàpies carried out over eight decades. As a result of this dance between trial and error, Tàpies experimented with all kinds of media and techniques. He expressed this in drawings, collages, paintings, objects and sculptures, made with multiple materials: paper, cardboard, wood, marble dust, bronze, varnish… The end result is a new approach to aesthetic forms for thinking about the contemporary world from a perspective based on matter and existence. All of this is reflected in this ambitious retrospective that constitutes one of the largest reviews of his work to date.
View of the exhibition Antoni Tàpies. The Practice of Art, 2024, Museu Tàpies, Barcelona / VEGAP, 2024. Editorial credit: Pep Herrero.
Antoni Tàpies. The Practice of Art is born of a clear purpose: to reflect on the memory contained in the space of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, now known as the Museu Tàpies. Through a sequence of the main projects that have marked the history of the institution, the exhibition offers a non-linear journey through the artist’s career.
With a selection of works from 1943 to 2011, the exhibition shows from the artist’s first self-portraits to his last works – a year before his death – marked by his preoccupation with death. Along this timeline we find material and political works, as well as more intimate ones, such as the Sèrie Teresa, dedicated to his wife.
In this non-linear journey, Antoni Tàpies. The Practice of Art is articulated around various environments. Specifically, the starting point is the self-portraits that Tàpies painted during a long period of convalescence due to illness, the legacy of the avant-garde and his links with the artistic group Dau al Set. It also highlights his experimentation with raw materials in the 1950s, which made his work known worldwide.
Antoni Tàpies. Gran relleu negre, 1973. Museo Meadows, SMU Dallas. Compra del museo, Meadows Museum Acquisition Fund, MM.88.01, 2024. © Comissió Tàpies / VEGAP, 2024.
A decade later, in 1960, Tàpies focused his artistic production on everyday objects, through which he reinforced his anti-Franco political commitment. Of particular note were his works on paper and cardboard through drawing and grattage, a surrealist pictorial technique created by Max Ernst, which consists of placing a canvas with one or more layers of oil paint on a textured object that is subsequently scraped off.
Finally, in his last period, his worldwide recognition coexisted with the opening of the Museu Tàpies in 1990 and his preoccupation with illness.
In addition to the exhibition, the Museu Tàpies has organised a wide-ranging public and educational programme, as well as a catalogue with texts by Manuel Borja-Villel, Carles Guerra and Pedro de Llano Neira.
Antoni Tàpies. Large painting, 1958. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2024. © Tàpies Commission / VEGAP, 2024.
Antoni Tàpies. The Practice of Art will be on view at the Museu Tàpies until 12 January 2025. Before coming to Barcelona, it will be presented at the Bozar in Brussels (autumn 2023) and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (spring 2024).
“I try to make my painting useful…. Painting is my therapy. It is my way of
learn to live with myself, to understand myself, to understand the world around me and also to help
world around me and also to help others. However, I can’t help
I can’t help but feel overwhelmed by the tragedies that are taking place in the world and that seem to be getting
and which seem to be getting worse and worse… And, wars aside, I cannot ignore
the fact that our so-called welfare society is, above all, a consumer society that is
above all, a consumer society that is rooted in the destruction of nature, in injustice
nature, countless injustices and widespread suffering.
It is vitally important that people realise this”.
Antoni Tàpies to Manuel J. Borja-Villel, “By Way of Introduction:
A Conversation with Antoni Tàpies”, in Antoni Tàpies: New Paintings,
New York, Pace Wildenstein, 1995.
