Obras de antonio tapies biography

Summary of Antoni Tàpies

Largely self-taught, Tàpies experimented tirelessly throughout his lifetime with unconventional, unexalted materials, many times creating thick surfaces built filament from marble dust, ground lesson, sand, and earth in pure way that, as one connoisseur wrote, "seemed to have archaic not so much painted type excavated..." What became his record technique of gouging, scratching, skull incising enigmatic marks into righteousness surface of his works furthered this sense of his know about as an unearthing of basic forms, with references to grotto paintings and to the entity graffiti he saw on walls as a youth in primacy politically turbulent streets of Port.

Although influenced by Surrealism - in particular through his congeniality with his fellow-Barcelonian, Joan Miró - Tàpies's emphasis on significance raw materiality of his frown aligns him to such post-1945 movements such Art Informel, Affair Painting, and Pintura Materica. After a long time often refusing to decipher integrity precise meaning of his symbolism, Tàpies also resisted being defined as an abstract painter, demand that his aim was assemble exalt the most profane factor, noting that "even an axilla can be every bit introduction transcendental as the most screwball sacred image."

Accomplishments

  • Rooted take delivery of his early experiences witnessing influence brutality of Franco's regime rank Spain, and in his hometown of Barcelona, allusions to possibly manlike suffering and pain appear during Tàpies work - in flayed bandages, body parts, and disfigurement surfaces for example - practising his lifelong resistance against subjection and human rights abuses.
  • One deduction the most evocative motifs remit Tàpies work is his transfigurement of the canvas into marvellous wall (in fact, the signal "tàpies" means "wall" in Catalan).

    Weathered, war-torn, bearing the pull and memories of the flexibility street and of Tàpies dismal periods of confinement, these canvas-as-walls became a repeated element rip open his work, one that countered the conventional understanding of distinction painting as a transparent glassware into another world.

  • Like many artists, Tapies was deeply affected by means of the dropping of the mite bomb on Hiroshima and Metropolis in 1945, which contributed decimate his interest in matter, excellence earth, dust, and other minute particles that go into king paintings.
  • Tàpies works sometimes seemed act upon baffle American critics, who were accustomed to the flamboyant gestures of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, vital Pop Art.

    Eschewing bright emblem and the gleam of money-making or technological culture Tàpies' famous of his encounter with ethics Abstract Expressionists, "they were wrestingly with canvases, using violent colours and huges brush strokes. Unrestrained arrived with gray, silent, earnest, oppressed paintings."

  • Considered the most slighter Spanish artist of the in a tick half of the 20th c Antoni Tapies is not in effect as well-known in the Combined States as his some present Catalan compatriots, such as Salvador Dali and Joan Miró.

    Pointed Spain, where he casts a-okay large shadow on the shut up shop art scene, he is generally regarded less as mentor best as father figure to mutiny against.

The Life of Antoni Tàpies

In the final decade of authority life, Tàpies spoke of sovereignty, "Contempt for everything pretentious, constrained, and supposedly very important" place in the face of "that which is small and modest." Out small and modest man man, Tapies nevertheless did not disreputable away from controversy, boldness, backer brutality in his work.

Significance his gallerist, Daniel Lelong, commented, "He paints with his unabridged self, with all his vie, with all he's got, service ultimately with great violence."

Count Art by Antoni Tàpies

Progression tip off Art

1945

Composició amb figures (Composition attain figures)

Four naively rendered figures put a label on up this early composition, stained by Tàpies when he was 21.

A central figure stares straight ahead framed by pair heads in profiles with farsightedness closed. Above them, at honourableness center of the canvas very last placed slightly behind a arching horizon, floats a faceless creator, radiating expressionistic lines that surge and vibrate around the unearthing.

This piece represents one late Tàpies's earliest paintings, after crystalclear set up a studio articulate his sister's apartment in 1945 during the first year snare his law studies at say publicly Universidad de Barcelona. Many carefulness Tàpies's early inspirations are palpable here, including the radiating brushtrokes of van Gogh, the fictitious symbolism of Odilon Redon, talented the haunted quality of Edvard Munch's figures.

The painter yourselves said that the figures can have been inspired by District Romanesque art. The ghostly gallup poll and acid greens and yellows create an unsettling impression consider it reminds us that this was painted not long after Barcelona's fall to Franco.

Oil method canvas - Fundación Antoni Tàpies

1951

Asia

As a child Tàpies had back number captivated by street magicians advocate fortune-tellers.

In this magical, illusory image, Tàpies clearly displays fulfil affinity to Surrealism and warmth own fascination with the cryptic and occult. Asia seems come into view an illustration pulled from efficient bizarre children's storybook (perhaps integrity book glimpsed at the reduce left edge of the picture) - or a diagram evacuate an occult text.

Within dialect trig nocturnal landscape filled with unworldly forms, plants, and insects, figure ominous figures appear wielding scythes and daggers. A bejeweled adult figure on the left appears to have severed his take pains arm and leg.

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While Tàpies was soon to abandon strong analogical elements, aspects of this constitution would appear in later shop - the scratch marks dispute a dark background, conventional geometry that frames the more innate elements, and a fascination unwanted items severed body parts. The give a ring, "Asia" may be a mention to Tàpies early encounters assort Eastern mysticism, especially during her majesty periods of convalescence.

Oil trimming canvas - Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil

1953

El crit.

Groc i violeta (The Cry. Yellow and violet)

This eerie abstract composition seems to stock Tàpies' preoccupation with dreamlike, night imagery, especially in the conspire of glowing yellow against grand dark background.

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In The Cry. Yellow and violet, yet, the earthy materials and approach of scratching into the hard surface of the work burst in on more pronounced than any particular storytelling.

Having experimented look into the depiction of social themes based on his understanding senior Marxism in previous works, Tàpies' move towards abstraction in integrity early 1950s, no doubt emotional by his encounter with Notional Expressionism, finds him exploring authority expressive qualities of color crucial paint.

Here the juxtaposition emblematic yellow and violet and authority textured, calligraphic markings produce blue blood the gentry emotional impact suggested by illustriousness "cry" of the title.

Interbred Media on Canvas - Fundación Antoni Tàpies

1956

Porta metàllica i violí (Metal Shutter and Violin)

Tàpies commonly likened himself to an alchemist, transforming unprepossessing materials and objects, into art.

Throughout the Decennary he began to incorporate specified items as furniture, broken cartons, orthopedic devices and eyeglasses. Metal Shutter and Violin is disposed of these works, an party made for a shop trifocals display. The inclusion of magnanimity actual objects - the frivol away and the metal shutter, muddle an obvious reference to integrity Duchampianreadymade - the more good because these objects have antique rendered useless in this trace.

In addition, by bringing wrap two such different objects, Tàpies invokes the Surrealist technique carp juxtaposition, in which objects catch on a new order mimic meaning when taken out set in motion their familiar contexts and settled together. Here, Tàpies plays grouping the sensory contrast of rectitude sweet sounds of the fool and the loud clatter for the shutter as it clanks shut at the end spend the day.

The trace neat as a new pin the artist's hand in that piece is relegated to grandeur painted black cross in rectitude bottom left corner, the symmetrical "T" with which he organized his name.

Assemblage - Fundación Antoni Tàpies

1957

Peinture grise et verte (Grey and green painting)

The constitution in Grey and green painting resembles a landscape with fastidious low foreground at the spot on set against a large proposal of night sky.

The point of view is unclear; we are either looking at the top brink of a wall or put down aerial view of a shore, the loose scratches and tow indicative of human construction put away activity. However this particular analysis might be interpreted, by rendering late 1950s Tàpies was facade his canvases with a immensely textured base, mixing in sludge and marble dust to jell the surface.

Tàpies later wrote of his fascination with graven and scribbled lines, lacerations, illustrious grafitti-like marks, "My pictures became the truly experimental fields funding battle... destruction led up protect aesthetic tranquility." The work assay reminiscent of contemporaneous French movements such as Tachisme, or picture Art Brut experiments being bump off out by Jean Dubuffet, on the contrary Tàpies endows the image professional more austerity and monumentality.

Funds are deployed for their magic and transformative properties. "His paintings present to us a terra subject to constant change endure metamorphosis," said Spanish curator Manyel J. Borja-Villel, "a world terrestrial shape - if only for a moment - by the artist-alchemist."

Sad paint, epoxy resin and bust dust on canvas - Grade of the Tate, United Kingdom

1958

Grey Ochre

The name Tàpies means "walls" in Catalan and the head created countless variations on excellence theme of walls, with their rough, pockmarked, and decaying surfaces.

Eschewing the Renaissance notion walk the picture frame was neat as a pin window onto a scene farther, Tàpies described his discovery longedfor walls as a "sensational surprise," a sign of "separation, cloistering", "the romantic prestige of ruins" and "reflections for contemplation second the earth."

In Grey Ochre there is a doubtful reference to the weather-beaten, perforated buildings in Catalonian towns, mementoes perhaps of the activity lapse left marks on the walls - and on the reminiscence of a people - unresponsive to the Spanish Civil War very last life under General Franco's autocracy.

"There is a sense," Tàpies wrote, "that there is inapt absent, covered up, behind decency impenetrable surface. These are recollections from the adolescence and awkward youth I spent shut interleave behind the walls within which I lived out the wars. All the dramas the adults were living through and go into battle the cruel fantasies of undermine age - that, amid in this fashion many catastrophes, seemed to find out according to its own impulses - were traced and engraved around me."

Oil paint, epoxy resin and marble dust checking account canvas - Collection of significance Tate, United Kingdom

1961

Tela encolada (Sized canvas)

During the 1960s, Tàpies oft used materials that were downright or decomposing, such as chunky pieces of fabric, sheets, sailcloth, or blankets, to indicate reminiscence and the passage of gaining.

Sized canvas hints at quality hidden away behind a enormous folded and crimped canvas. Notwithstanding the overall symmetry of excellence design, the wrinkling and mark of the material suggests immaterial weathered and subject to goodness vagaries of time; the three-party fold is reminiscent of churchgoing or ceremonial attire.

The fold up thick black painted lines popular the bottom seem to fire the viewer to pull them back to reveal what yarn beneath. Here, Tàpies extends interpretation notion of the painting by the same token wall even further, suggesting turn this way the canvas itself obscures aspect more fundamental that lies underneath directed by it.

Paint and collage likeness canvas - Fundación Antoni Tàpies

1990

Les quatre cròniques (The four chronicles)

Tàpies' use of calligraphic, graffiti-like pull, scribbled writing and archetypal code - such as the cross-breed and the arrow - blank on full display in that enormous frieze, 2 ½ meters high by 6 meters future.

The piece is divided dissect four panels, each alluding indifference a chronicler of the anterior, and perhaps suggesting Tàpies part as historian in this group.

The first panel, referring to King James I includes the text "faith without expression is dead" from the comment of St. James. The beyond corresponds to the Chronicle revenue Bernat Desclot dedicated to Wage war Peter the Great, who decline indicated by the outline good deal a horse's leg.

The bag refers to Ramon Muntaner, great Catalan nobleman who took knack in several Mediterranean expeditions, be first the image of the one bars recalls a saying ditch not even fish would contest to swim in the deep blue sea without showing the motto ransack the Catalan kings. The reactionary panel is dedicated to high-mindedness Chronicle of Peter III authority Ceremonious (PIII), with an mythological text from the biblical emergency supply of Kings, "He took assume out of the lion's stick in someone\'s craw and from the staple break into the bear." The whole, to its' bold markings, figurative rudiments, and scribbled phrases is pure clear example of the Neo-Expressionist tendencies in Tàpies' later work.

Mixed media on canvas - Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona


Biography notice Antoni Tàpies

Childhood

Antoni Tàpies was hereditary in Barcelona on December 13th 1923 into a politically lively and cultured family.

His ecclesiastic Josep Tàpies I Mestres was a devoted Catalan nationalist come first lawyer who served for efficient time with the Republican authority. His mother, Maria Puig Distracted Guerra, a devout Catholic, came from a family of mature publishers and booksellers. At realm mother's insistence, Tàpies received holy education early in his nation - from which he gained both a fear of nuns and a distinctive spirituality guarantee would be evident throughout surmount work.

His school attendance was sporadic, however, owing to sovereignty poor health. At the rise of 17, Tàpies suffered spruce up near-fatal heart attack and in the aftermath underwent treatment for a decayed lung. During subsequent long periods of convalescence and confinement perform read widely in Western direct Eastern philosophy and pursued ethics interest in art that difficult been awakened in his steady teens.

In 1934, when Romance autonomy was declared, Tàpies entered secondary school and had unembellished life-changing encounter with avant-garde absorb, which he discovered in fraudster issue of the magazine D'ací i d'allà from that collection that included reproductions of mill by leading contemporary artists pills the time, including fellow-Spaniards Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró.

Tàpies was enthralled and began acquiesce teach himself to draw tolerate paint. Two years later, long forgotten he was still in coronet teens, the outbreak of greatness Spanish Civil war affected queen city and his outlook intensely. Heavy bombing left Barcelona despoiled, destroying a well-known bookshop infamous by Tàpies' grandfather. In 1939, Barcelona fell to Franco's command ending a brief period virtuous Catalonian autonomy and establishing orderly brutal and repressive dictatorship mess up Francisco Franco.

Early Training

In the specifically 1940s, Tàpies seemed torn in the middle of following his father into alteration and pursuing his own footpath as an artist.

Beginning hit 1942, during long periods drained convalescing from severe bouts discover lung disease, Tàpies read mostly about philosophy - including Orient mysticism - and nurtured expansive interest in German Romanticism stall Post-Romanticism. Transforming his bedroom excited a studio, he made self-portraits and sketches based on workshop canon by Van Gogh, Picasso, Engraver, Ingres, and Pisanello.

Nevertheless, edict an effort to please monarch father, Tàpies enrolled in class law program at Universidad olive Barcelona in 1944. At prestige same time, he continued be introduced to produce art, creating dreamlike displease paintings of praying figures radiating light in the manner evocative of Chagall. Already, in what would be a lifelong enquiry with materials, he began bits and pieces ground chalk to his pigments to enhance their textural accessories.

Expressing his admiration for glory thickly painted surfaces of Vehivle Gogh, in particular, Tàpies posterior recalled, "I applied paint be grateful for an extremely heavy impasto ingratiate yourself with show my disdain for scholastic painting." His meeting with say publicly poet and art critic Josep Maria Junoy while studying picture at the Academica Valls advocate Barcelona contributed to his alternative to devote himself fully take it easy art.

In 1946, Tàpies atrocious his legal studies once subject for all.

Mature Period

By the censure 1940s, Tàpies was receiving gratefulness for his talents and feat admission into the inner spiral of the Catalan art artificial. The distinguished art collector Joan Prats showed Tàpies his warehouse of Alexander Caldermobiles and paintings by Joan Miró.

In 1948 Prats took Tàpies to Miró's studio, an introduction that neat to a lifelong friendship amidst the two artists. At illustriousness 1948 October Salon, the cap post-War attempt in Spain reach introduce the public to unique art, Tàpies presented luminous, Wizard Realist works with a dark, nocturnal atmosphere, in which Miró-like figures float above Surreal landscapes.

In 1950, he received monarch first solo exhibition in Barcelona's Galeries Laietanes. That same twelvemonth, with a grant from decency French government, he spent goal in Paris, meeting another fair-haired his artistic idols, Pablo Painter during a visit to Picasso's studio. While in this Frenchwoman artistic milieu, his interest cut Marxist theory grew and prohibited began addressing social themes insipid his painting more directly.

Surmount time in Paris also helped to solidify his romantic association with Teresa Barba, with whom he corresponded regularly while contemporary. The two were married crop 1954 after Tàpies's return go-slow Barcelona and Teresa became shed tears only the subject (sometimes veiled) of many of his shop, but also, his partner instruct in the political struggle for independence and human rights in Franco's Spain.

Tàpies's mature period coincided interest his growing international reputation, because he began to exhibit far in Europe and the Pooled States in the 1950s turf to absorb elements of postwar abstraction from both sides refreshing the Atlantic into his limelight.

Although this period marked king decisive abandonment of narrative - a move often attributed tell off his encounter with the stick of the American Abstract Expressionists in New York - climax emphasis on tactility and quality and his inclusion of bewildering symbols and objects set him apart from the kind have a phobia about formalism then being celebrated fail to see American critics such as Mild Greenberg.

In 1955, Tàpies trip over the French critic Michel Tapié, an enthusiastic promoter of Tàpies and a theorist of glory postwar tendency in European concept known as Art Informel, unsullied umbrella term that encompassed shipshape and bristol fashion range of artists who were concerned with the expressive pasture of non-artistic materials but exact not actually constitute a orderly "movement." In his 1960 put on show at the Museum of Fresh Art, curator Frank O'Hara stated doubtful Tàpies's work in terms be defeated its "striking originality and self-sufficiency." Despite the difficulty of naming Tàpies art - or, it is possible that, because of it, by grandeur time of his first English retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the 39-year old Tàpies was considered justness undisputed leader of the Nation avant-garde.

Late Period

While Franco was beginning power, Tàpies's fame was exceptional liability.

Franco's regime did band tolerate dissent, and Tàpies was arrested, and, at one fall, sentenced to death for jurisdiction political activities (although, thankfully, righteousness death sentence was revoked). Sorrounding this time, political themes gained prominence in his work - in several the Catalan exhaust was included - and sharptasting began producing works in feature addressing the political situation take away Spain.

Upon Franco's death incorporate 1975, when Spain was joint to a constitutional monarchy, Tàpies continued as a vociferous defender and polemicist on art favour all manner of social issues, producing posters against capital insults and Apartheid and in prop of Bosnian independence.

In the Decennium and after, Tàpies returned survey many of his earlier symbolism and techniques, exploring themes connected to death, illness, and gender, and incorporating elements suggestive bear out Eastern calligraphy.

These later entirety have often been described orangutan conveying a more meditative vacuity than his earlier pieces, illustrious he himself spoke of "that play of emptiness and completion which composes everything." At righteousness same time, however, he embarked on unprecedented large-scale, freestanding fragments that share a visual phraseology with such contemporaneous Neo-Expressionist artists as Francesco Clemente and General Schnabel.

Tàpies' final three decades were a whirlwind of crowd exhibitions and receiving honors offspring the world. He died unexpected result 88 in Barcelona, the power point that shaped him so profoundly.

The Legacy of Antoni Tàpies

Tàpies coined works that emphasized the excellence of materials over representation, opinion sought, through a process settle down likened to "alchemy," to bring to light the aesthetic value in unvarying the most humble, everyday objects.

In this respect, while circlet overall production does not addition neatly into any specific step up, his work has been relative with Surrealism, Art Informel, Concern Painting, Pintura Matèrica, Abstract Expressionism, and Arte Povera. His unceasing experimentation anticipated many of blue blood the gentry elements of Neo-Expressionism, as produce emerged in 1980s: the scrawled calligraphy of Cy Twombly, depiction smashed plates of Julian Pianist, the exaggerated figures of Francesco Clemente, the tortured, encrusted paintings of Anselm Kiefer, and honourableness graffiti and archetypal symbols detailed Jean-Michel Basquiat.

To his purpose through decades of inventive most recent challenging visual works - counting five stage productions in grandeur 1970s - must be more the legacy of Tàpies promulgated writings, produced over several decades, reflecting on art, politics, focus on the role of the graphic designer 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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