To mark the centenary of the artist's birth, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies joins forces with Madrid's Reina Sofia and BOZAR-Brussels to celebrate a Tàpies Year. Following a violent tachycardia attack that left him pronounced dead, the young Antoni first turned to the magical world of the unconscious, experimenting with Surrealism. But faced with the oppression of Franco's regime in Catalonia, the Catalan began to paint fragments of mutilated or bound human bodies. In his quest for total art, Tàpies moved towards matierism and informality, becoming close to the Italian Arte povera and heralding the arrival of graffiti. He used all kinds of heterogeneous materials to build his "walls", witness to the march of time, "rejection of the world, annihilation of passions, silence, death". Using - like Zurbarán or Ribera - gray or brown colors, linked, according to him, "to the light of dreams and to the Franciscan world", he mixes his paintings of signs, crosses or patches of varnish flowing like honey with elementary or discarded objects.

Antoni Tàpies. La pratique de l’art. BOZAR, Bruxelles. Du 15 septembre 2023 au 7 janvier 2024

Excerpt from an article by Emmanuel Daydé to be published in Art magazine N°108 Absolument.

exhibition's website