Tàpies, Antoni

b. 1923, Barcelona

   Artist

   The steel wire sculpture on the roof of the Tàpies Foundation in Barcelona traces the image of a chair floating amongst clouds. This is essentially a call to contemplation, for Tàpies is an experimental artist whose work is rooted in ideas. The Civil War awakened Tàpies" political consciousness and during the Franco era he was strongly identified with the Catalan people and opposition politics, hence his many subsequent renderings of the Catalan flag and images of protest, as in L'Esperit català (The Catalan Spirit) and Coratge del poble (Courage of the People). Tàpies abandoned his law studies at the age of twenty-three and began experimenting with collage. His use of an obituary article to create a cross in Creu de paper de diari (Newspaper Cross), stressed the transcendental nature of life, and symbolized the fusion of the spiritual (vertical) with the terrestial (horizontal). The cross became a recurring image, evolving into the letter T, for Tàpies, and also X, suggesting rejection and/or harmony, depending on the context. While participating with Joan Brossa on the 1940s surrealist magazine Dau al set (The Seventh Side of the Die), he became interested in medievalism and magic, seeing artists and alchemists as transformers of reality. A trip to Paris in the 1950s confirmed his allegiance to socialist ideology, but led him to reject the propaganda approach of social realist art, as well as the then fashionable abstract alternatives, which he found cold and geometric. He experimented with natural materials such as sand, marble dust and coloured earth, giving rise to his now famous "matter paintings". Inspired by modern scientific theory and oriental philosophy, both of which emphasize the common origin of all matter (quanta/dust), Tàpies successfully fused the medium with the message so that they became indistinguishable in Terra i pintura (Earth and Paint) and Pintura rosa i blava (Pink and Blue Paint/Painting).

   Tàpies is sometimes associated with an artistic movement known as Informalism which was opposed to all intellectual categories (form) and the dualism of western culture (heaven/hell, body/ soul). Informe's views on unnecessary waste inspired Tàpies to paint a calloused foot and other objects normally rejected by capitalist society. He called these works Matèria en forma de peu (Matter in the Shape of a Foot) and Matèria en forma d'aixela (Matter in the Shape of an Armpit), because all organic life is constantly reshaping itself. His own materials did so as well, evolving naturally into the eponymous "wall paintings" (tapia = wall/Tàpies), with associations of separation, enclosure, and the clandestine graffiti of a persecuted people. Tàpies has been universally acclaimed since the 1950s. Most major art galleries have on display examples of his huge output of more than 7,000 works.

   Further reading

   - Catoir, B. (1991) Conversations with Antoni Tàpies, Munich: Prestel (an excellent general introduction followed by interviews).

   - Gimferrer, P. (1986) Tàpies and the Catalan Spirit, Barcelona: Polígrafa (a sensitive account).

   - Penrose, R. (1977) Tàpies, Barcelona: Polígrafa (perceptive and well structured).

   HELEN OPPENHEIMER