The History of the Spanish ArtistAntoni Tàpies
Considered the most important Spanish artist of the second half of the 20th century,Antoni Tàpies He was known for his mixed media paintings that incorporated marble dust, found objects and resin. His highly textured and tactile paintings were influenced by his experience of the politics and environment of the war and the post-war state of the Spanish government. Like other artists at the time, social themes run through his art. “If someone draws things in a way that gives only the slightest clue to their meaning, the viewer is forced to fill in the gaps using their own imagination,” he reflected. “is obliged to participate in the creative act, which I consider very important.”
Antoni Tàpies born on December 13, 1923 in Barcelona, Spain, he studied law while keeping his interest in art alive. The first artistic attempts toAntoni Tàpies began during a long convalescence after a serious illness, after which his growing dedication to painting and drawing led him to abandon his university studies. In the 1940s, he already exhibited works that distinguished him in the artistic scene of the moment. He became friends with his Catalan colleague Joan Miró, who turned out to be an integral influence on Tàpies' early surrealist works. Incorporating the brands Paul Klee, joined the informalism movement (Art Informel), during a period in which his work turned to the abstract and apparently anticipated the Arte Povera movement.
largely self-taught,Antoni Tàpies experimented tirelessly throughout his career with unconventional and unexalted materials, often creating thick surfaces constructed of marble dust, ground chalk, sand and earth in a way that, as one critic wrote, "looked as if it hadn't been painted so much as excavated..." Gradually, he began to incorporate geometric elements and color studies, leading to an interest in the subject through the use of heavily textured canvases with great expressive and communicative possibilities. What turned out to be his signature technique: scratching and incising enigmatic marks on the surface of his works.
Although he often refused to decipher the precise meaning of his images,Antoni Tàpies also resisted being characterized as an abstract painter, insisting that his aim was to exalt the most profane object, noting that "even an armpit can be as transcendental as the most conventional sacred image." With these works, Tàpies achieved international recognition in the mid-1950s. In the 1960s, he began to incorporate new iconographic elements (writing, signs, anthropomorphic elements, footprints and references to the Catalan situation) and new technical methods (new surfaces, everyday objects and varnish). The pictorial language has continued to develop since then, resulting in creative and productive work that is admired around the world. Over the next several decades, the artist became more subtle in his choice of materials and tried to convey the accidental marks of walls and graffiti. He died on February 6, 2012 in Barcelona, Spain.
He received several prizes, such as the Prize of the Fundación Wolf de las Artes (1981), the UNESCO Medal of Picasso (1993) and the Velázquez Prize for Visual Arts (2003). In 2010, King D. Carlos I granted him the title of Maquês de Tàpies. Today, his works are on display at the Fundació Museum.Antoni Tàpies, in Barcelona, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, at the Tate Gallery, in London, and at the Museo Nacional Reina Sofia, in Madrid, among others.Antoni Tàpies, in Barcelona, a space that, in addition to the exhibition, offers access to the artist's personal library and an auditorium. A space that, in addition to wanting to show his work to the world, aims to be a meeting place and to make known the contribution of modern art and oriental tradition to society.
