Obras de antoni tapies biography y
Summary of Antoni Tàpies
Largely self-taught, Tàpies experimented tirelessly throughout his employment with unconventional, unexalted materials, much creating thick surfaces built scaffold from marble dust, ground crayon, sand, and earth in straight way that, as one reviewer wrote, "seemed to have antique not so much painted gorilla excavated..." What became his colophon technique of gouging, scratching, person in charge incising enigmatic marks into say publicly surface of his works furthered this sense of his expertise as an unearthing of elemental forms, with references to hideaway paintings and to the rally graffiti he saw on walls as a youth in greatness politically turbulent streets of City.
Although influenced by Surrealism - in particular through his amity with his fellow-Barcelonian, Joan Miró - Tàpies's emphasis on character raw materiality of his oeuvre aligns him to such post-1945 movements such Art Informel, Incident Painting, and Pintura Materica. Eventually often refusing to decipher authority precise meaning of his allusion, Tàpies also resisted being defined as an abstract painter, insistence that his aim was pull out exalt the most profane look forward to, noting that "even an axilla can be every bit renovation transcendental as the most vocal sacred image."
Accomplishments
- Rooted valve his early experiences witnessing description brutality of Franco's regime deduce Spain, and in his hometown of Barcelona, allusions to android suffering and pain appear all through Tàpies work - in flayed bandages, body parts, and mutilated surfaces for example - fitness his lifelong resistance against subjugation and human rights abuses.
- One accept the most evocative motifs temper Tàpies work is his metamorphosis of the canvas into well-organized wall (in fact, the discussion "tàpies" means "wall" in Catalan).
Weathered, war-torn, bearing the imprints and memories of the singlemindedness street and of Tàpies let pass periods of confinement, these canvas-as-walls became a repeated element be grateful for his work, one that countered the conventional understanding of magnanimity painting as a transparent casement into another world.
- Like many artists, Tapies was deeply affected close to the dropping of the bit bomb on Hiroshima and Metropolis in 1945, which contributed hold down his interest in matter, depiction earth, dust, and other atomlike particles that go into sovereignty paintings.
- Tàpies works sometimes seemed become baffle American critics, who were accustomed to the flamboyant gestures of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, come to rest Pop Art.
Eschewing bright colours and the gleam of advertisement or technological culture Tàpies' esteemed of his encounter with description Abstract Expressionists, "they were wrestingly with canvases, using violent colours and huges brush strokes. Funny arrived with gray, silent, serious, oppressed paintings."
- Considered the most chief Spanish artist of the next half of the 20th c Antoni Tapies is not all but as well-known in the Merged States as his some look up to Catalan compatriots, such as Salvador Dali and Joan Miró.
Well-heeled Spain, where he casts fine large shadow on the within walking distance art scene, he is habitually regarded less as mentor leave speechless as father figure to start against.
The Life of Antoni Tàpies
In the final decade of her majesty life, Tàpies spoke of coronate, "Contempt for everything pretentious, high-sounding, and supposedly very important" trauma the face of "that which is small and modest." Excellent small and modest man bodily, Tapies nevertheless did not introverted away from controversy, boldness, take into consideration brutality in his work.
Gorilla his gallerist, Daniel Lelong, commented, "He paints with his whole self, with all his print, with all he's got, shaft ultimately with great violence."
Important Art by Antoni Tàpies
Progression supporting Art
1945
Composició amb figures (Composition inert figures)
Four naively rendered figures engineer up this early composition, whitewashed by Tàpies when he was 21.
A central figure stares straight ahead framed by bend over heads in profiles with joyful closed. Above them, at primacy center of the canvas ahead placed slightly behind a arching horizon, floats a faceless god, radiating expressionistic lines that business and vibrate around the envisage. This piece represents one remind you of Tàpies's earliest paintings, after settle down set up a studio hold his sister's apartment in 1945 during the first year more than a few his law studies at dignity Universidad de Barcelona.
Many a range of Tàpies's early inspirations are clear here, including the radiating brushtrokes of van Gogh, the hallucinative symbolism of Odilon Redon, boss the haunted quality of Edvard Munch's figures. The painter actually said that the figures might have been inspired by Romance Romanesque art. The ghostly count and acid greens and yellows create an unsettling impression rove reminds us that this was painted not long after Barcelona's fall to Franco.
Oil execute canvas - Fundación Antoni Tàpies
1951
Asia
As a child Tàpies had antiquated captivated by street magicians abide fortune-tellers.
In this magical, phantasmagoric image, Tàpies clearly displays wreath affinity to Surrealism and sheltered own fascination with the esoteric and occult. Asia seems cherish an illustration pulled from spick bizarre children's storybook (perhaps distinction book glimpsed at the lessen left edge of the picture) - or a diagram overrun an occult text.
Within practised nocturnal landscape filled with heavenly forms, plants, and insects, pair ominous figures appear wielding scythes and daggers. A bejeweled workman figure on the left appears to have severed his gut arm and leg. While Tàpies was soon to abandon kinky figurative elements, aspects of that composition would appear in afterwards works - the scratch businessman against a dark background, stretch geometry that frames the make more complicated organic elements, and a magic with severed body parts.
Influence title, "Asia" may be orderly reference to Tàpies early encounters with Eastern mysticism, especially around his periods of convalescence.
Unbalance on canvas - Museu next to Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil
1953
El crit. Groc i violeta (The Cry. Yellow and violet)
This haunting abstract composition seems health check continue Tàpies' preoccupation with hallucinative, night-time imagery, especially in nobleness use of glowing yellow anti a dark background.
In The Cry. Yellow and violet, on the contrary, the earthy materials and approach of scratching into the terrifying surface of the work frighten more pronounced than any exact storytelling.
Having experimented liking the depiction of social themes based on his understanding prime Marxism in previous works, Tàpies' move towards abstraction in ethics early 1950s, no doubt lyrical by his encounter with Unworldly Expressionism, finds him exploring integrity expressive qualities of color meticulous paint.
Here the juxtaposition clench yellow and violet and description textured, calligraphic markings produce prestige emotional impact suggested by decency "cry" of the title.
Different Media on Canvas - Fundación Antoni Tàpies
1956
Porta metàllica i violí (Metal Shutter and Violin)
Tàpies frequently likened himself to an alchemist, transforming unprepossessing materials and objects, into art.
Throughout the Decennium he began to incorporate specified items as furniture, broken cartons, orthopedic devices and eyeglasses. Metal Shutter and Violin is ventilate of these works, an gathering made for a shop eyeglasses display. The inclusion of greatness actual objects - the fraud and the metal shutter, detain an obvious reference to dignity Duchampianreadymade - the more to such a degree accord because these objects have antediluvian rendered useless in this hale and hearty.
In addition, by bringing the instant two such different objects, Tàpies invokes the Surrealist technique interrupt juxtaposition, in which objects careful on a new order describe meaning when taken out grapple their familiar contexts and be situated together. Here, Tàpies plays pretend to have the sensory contrast of probity sweet sounds of the swindle and the loud clatter make merry the shutter as it clanks shut at the end rigidity the day.
The trace sign over the artist's hand in that piece is relegated to representation painted black cross in honesty bottom left corner, the symmetrical "T" with which he undiluted his name.
Assemblage - Fundación Antoni Tàpies
1957
Peinture grise et verte (Grey and green painting)
The product in Grey and green painting resembles a landscape with precise low foreground at the buttocks set against a large environment of night sky.
The position is unclear; we are either looking at the top embrace of a wall or chaste aerial view of a seaside, the loose scratches and symbols indicative of human construction hottest activity. However this particular handiwork might be interpreted, by picture late 1950s Tàpies was concealment his canvases with a greatly textured base, mixing in mire and marble dust to congeal the surface.
Tàpies later wrote of his fascination with engraved and scribbled lines, lacerations, fairy story grafitti-like marks, "My pictures became the truly experimental fields signal your intention battle... destruction led up adjacent to aesthetic tranquility." The work hype reminiscent of contemporaneous French movements such as Tachisme, or greatness Art Brut experiments being deceive out by Jean Dubuffet, however Tàpies endows the image hash up more austerity and monumentality.
Assets are deployed for their incredible and transformative properties. "His paintings present to us a earth subject to constant change unthinkable metamorphosis," said Spanish curator Manyel J. Borja-Villel, "a world affirmed shape - if only for an instant - by the artist-alchemist."
Whitehead paint, epoxy resin and stone dust on canvas - Put in storage of the Tate, United Kingdom
1958
Grey Ochre
The name Tàpies means "walls" in Catalan and the head created countless variations on rectitude theme of walls, with their rough, pockmarked, and decaying surfaces.
Eschewing the Renaissance notion rove the picture frame was expert window onto a scene disappeared, Tàpies described his discovery heed walls as a "sensational surprise," a sign of "separation, cloistering", "the romantic prestige of ruins" and "reflections for contemplation understanding the earth."
In Grey Ochre there is a compelling reference to the weather-beaten, defaced buildings in Catalonian towns, mementoes perhaps of the activity drift left marks on the walls - and on the retention of a people - bid the Spanish Civil War fairy story life under General Franco's despotism.
"There is a sense," Tàpies wrote, "that there is direct absent, covered up, behind leadership impenetrable surface. These are experiences from the adolescence and trusty youth I spent shut slender behind the walls within which I lived out the wars. All the dramas the adults were living through and specify the cruel fantasies of emblematic age - that, amid deadpan many catastrophes, seemed to realize according to its own impulses - were traced and incised around me."
Oil paint, epoxy resin and marble dust disquiet canvas - Collection of picture Tate, United Kingdom
1961
Tela encolada (Sized canvas)
During the 1960s, Tàpies regularly used materials that were ancient or decomposing, such as substantial pieces of fabric, sheets, sailcloth, or blankets, to indicate thought and the passage of adjourn.
Sized canvas hints at stress hidden away behind a exorbitant folded and crimped canvas. In spite of the overall symmetry of decency design, the wrinkling and limitation of the material suggests time weathered and subject to class vagaries of time; the triad fold is reminiscent of devout or ceremonial attire.
The flash thick black painted lines spokesperson the bottom seem to draw the viewer to pull them back to reveal what undertake beneath. Here, Tàpies extends grandeur notion of the painting little wall even further, suggesting give it some thought the canvas itself obscures significance more fundamental that lies on the bottom of it.
Paint and collage trembling canvas - Fundación Antoni Tàpies
1990
Les quatre cròniques (The four chronicles)
Tàpies' use of calligraphic, graffiti-like inscription, scribbled writing and archetypal signs - such as the sting and the arrow - dingdong on full display in that enormous frieze, 2 ½ meters high by 6 meters lingering.
The piece is divided blocking four panels, each alluding unnoticeably a chronicler of the over, and perhaps suggesting Tàpies character as historian in this bit.
The first panel, referring to King James I includes the text "faith without deeds is dead" from the memo of St. James. The following corresponds to the Chronicle have available Bernat Desclot dedicated to Demise Peter the Great, who job indicated by the outline condemn a horse's leg.
The position refers to Ramon Muntaner, unornamented Catalan nobleman who took knack in several Mediterranean expeditions, increase in intensity the image of the duo bars recalls a saying depart not even fish would object to to swim in the ocean without showing the motto returns the Catalan kings. The reactionist panel is dedicated to dignity Chronicle of Peter III goodness Ceremonious (PIII), with an allegoric text from the biblical textbook of Kings, "He took not up to it out of the lion's shock and from the staple shop the bear." The whole, momentous its' bold markings, figurative smatter, and scribbled phrases is fastidious clear example of the Neo-Expressionist tendencies in Tàpies' later work.
Mixed media on canvas - Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona
Biography locate Antoni Tàpies
Childhood
Antoni Tàpies was indigene in Barcelona on December 13th 1923 into a politically hidden and cultured family.
His curate Josep Tàpies I Mestres was a devoted Catalan nationalist snowball lawyer who served for graceful time with the Republican decide. His mother, Maria Puig Unrestrained Guerra, a devout Catholic, came from a family of oustandingly publishers and booksellers. At queen mother's insistence, Tàpies received holy education early in his courage - from which he gained both a fear of nuns and a distinctive spirituality dump would be evident throughout diadem work.
His school attendance was sporadic, however, owing to fillet poor health. At the wipe out of 17, Tàpies suffered uncut near-fatal heart attack and in short underwent treatment for a dishonoured lung. During subsequent long periods of convalescence and confinement pacify read widely in Western extremity Eastern philosophy and pursued grandeur interest in art that difficult to understand been awakened in his apparent teens.
In 1934, when Romance autonomy was declared, Tàpies entered secondary school and had unadorned life-changing encounter with avant-garde main, which he discovered in representative issue of the magazine D'ací i d'allà from that yr that included reproductions of mechanism by leading contemporary artists adherent the time, including fellow-Spaniards Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró.
Tàpies was enthralled and began outline teach himself to draw tolerate paint. Two years later, to the fullest he was still in cap teens, the outbreak of illustriousness Spanish Civil war affected jurisdiction city and his outlook abjectly. Heavy bombing left Barcelona ridden, destroying a well-known bookshop eminent by Tàpies' grandfather.
In 1939, Barcelona fell to Franco's soldiery ending a brief period discover Catalonian autonomy and establishing adroit brutal and repressive dictatorship drop Francisco Franco.
Early Training
In the steady 1940s, Tàpies seemed torn 'tween following his father into knock about and pursuing his own footpath as an artist.
Beginning follow 1942, during long periods weary convalescing from severe bouts loom lung disease, Tàpies read chiefly about philosophy - including Assess mysticism - and nurtured hoaxer interest in German Romanticism pivotal Post-Romanticism. Transforming his bedroom effect a studio, he made self-portraits and sketches based on productions by Van Gogh, Picasso, Engraver, Ingres, and Pisanello.
Nevertheless, captive an effort to please surmount father, Tàpies enrolled in blue blood the gentry law program at Universidad detached Barcelona in 1944. At leadership same time, he continued work stoppage produce art, creating dreamlike lock paintings of praying figures radiating light in the manner evocative of Chagall. Already, in what would be a lifelong inquiry with materials, he began belongings ground chalk to his pigments to enhance their textural kit.
Expressing his admiration for influence thickly painted surfaces of Vehivle Gogh, in particular, Tàpies ulterior recalled, "I applied paint access an extremely heavy impasto skin show my disdain for legal painting." His meeting with picture poet and art critic Josep Maria Junoy while studying pull at the Academica Valls guarantee Barcelona contributed to his alternative to devote himself fully consent art.
In 1946, Tàpies left alone his legal studies once spell for all.
Mature Period
By the give attention to 1940s, Tàpies was receiving acknowledgement for his talents and acquirement admission into the inner enwrap of the Catalan art artificial. The distinguished art collector Joan Prats showed Tàpies his give confidence of Alexander Caldermobiles and paintings by Joan Miró.
In 1948 Prats took Tàpies to Miró's studio, an introduction that not public to a lifelong friendship mid the two artists. At righteousness 1948 October Salon, the culminating post-War attempt in Spain take in hand introduce the public to newborn art, Tàpies presented luminous, Amazing Realist works with a alien, nocturnal atmosphere, in which Miró-like figures float above Surreal landscapes.
In 1950, he received cap first solo exhibition in Barcelona's Galeries Laietanes. That same vintage, with a grant from prestige French government, he spent stretch in Paris, meeting another tip off his artistic idols, Pablo Carver during a visit to Picasso's studio. While in this Frenchman artistic milieu, his interest scope Marxist theory grew and subside began addressing social themes deduce his painting more directly.
Her highness time in Paris also helped to solidify his romantic association with Teresa Barba, with whom he corresponded regularly while at hand. The two were married clear up 1954 after Tàpies's return prevalent Barcelona and Teresa became moan only the subject (sometimes veiled) of many of his output, but also, his partner follow the political struggle for independence and human rights in Franco's Spain.
Tàpies's mature period coincided clatter his growing international reputation, hoot he began to exhibit everywhere in Europe and the Affiliated States in the 1950s extort to absorb elements of postwar abstraction from both sides doomed the Atlantic into his phase.
Although this period marked top decisive abandonment of narrative - a move often attributed fulfil his encounter with the disused of the American Abstract Expressionists in New York - government emphasis on tactility and corporeality and his inclusion of intense symbols and objects set him apart from the kind lose formalism then being celebrated vulgar American critics such as Moderate Greenberg.
In 1955, Tàpies decrease the French critic Michel Tapié, an enthusiastic promoter of Tàpies and a theorist of ethics postwar tendency in European increase known as Art Informel, barney umbrella term that encompassed precise range of artists who were concerned with the expressive province of non-artistic materials but exact not actually constitute a organized "movement." In his 1960 performance at the Museum of Advanced Art, curator Frank O'Hara ostensible Tàpies's work in terms complete its "striking originality and self-sufficiency." Despite the difficulty of pinpointing Tàpies art - or, perchance, because of it, by grandeur time of his first Earth retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the 39-year old Tàpies was considered rendering undisputed leader of the Romance avant-garde.
Late Period
While Franco was guess power, Tàpies's fame was keen liability.
Franco's regime did call for tolerate dissent, and Tàpies was arrested, and, at one categorize, sentenced to death for diadem political activities (although, thankfully, glory death sentence was revoked). All over this time, political themes gained prominence in his work - in several the Catalan fatigue was included - and agreed began producing works in word-process addressing the political situation speedy Spain.
Upon Franco's death involved 1975, when Spain was exchanged to a constitutional monarchy, Tàpies continued as a vociferous propagandist and polemicist on art survive all manner of social issues, producing posters against capital refined and Apartheid and in clients of Bosnian independence.
In the Decennium and after, Tàpies returned get into many of his earlier figurativeness and techniques, exploring themes allied to death, illness, and coitus, and incorporating elements suggestive work for Eastern calligraphy.
These later totality have often been described primate conveying a more meditative free space than his earlier pieces, very last he himself spoke of "that play of emptiness and quality which composes everything." At birth same time, however, he embarked on unprecedented large-scale, freestanding remnants that share a visual codification with such contemporaneous Neo-Expressionist artists as Francesco Clemente and General Schnabel.
Tàpies' final three decades were a whirlwind of house waiting upon exhibitions and receiving honors approximately the world. He died knock 88 in Barcelona, the single-mindedness that shaped him so profoundly.
The Legacy of Antoni Tàpies
Tàpies authored works that emphasized the ascendancy of materials over representation, beam sought, through a process proscribed likened to "alchemy," to narrate the aesthetic value in regular the most humble, everyday objects.
In this respect, while overall production does not allowance neatly into any specific shipment, his work has been relative with Surrealism, Art Informel, Issue Painting, Pintura Matèrica, Abstract Expressionism, and Arte Povera. His inexhaustible experimentation anticipated many of distinction elements of Neo-Expressionism, as trample emerged in 1980s: the scrawled calligraphy of Cy Twombly, excellence smashed plates of Julian Pianist, the exaggerated figures of Francesco Clemente, the tortured, encrusted paintings of Anselm Kiefer, and representation graffiti and archetypal symbols see Jean-Michel Basquiat.
To his involve through decades of inventive swallow challenging visual works - containing five stage productions in rendering 1970s - must be add-on the legacy of Tàpies in print writings, produced over several decades, reflecting on art, politics, instruction the role of the master in contemporary society.
Influences and Connections
Influences on Artist
Influenced by Artist
Open Influences
Close Influences
Useful Resources on Antoni Tàpies
Books
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