Opening of the Tàpies’ Year

On December 13, 2023, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies begins the celebration of the centenary of the artist’s birth. Throughout 2024, a special  programme of exhibitions, publications, educational activities, unique events and creative and research projects will take place.

The aim of this commemoration is to consolidate the Fundació’s commitment to re-evaluate Antoni Tàpies’ work and ideas from new contemporary approaches to his art. The Centenary marks the beginning of a new era in the institution founded by the artist, while revisiting his capacity for dialogue and his interaction with the time in which he lived, from a critical and open view of the future.

During the morning of December 13, between 10am and 3:30pm, there will be free access the museum to visit the exhibitions and enjoy the reading activations linked to the eight chapters of Antoni Tàpies’ book A Personal Memoir. Fragments for an Autobiography. Throughout the morning, visitors can enjoy the artistic actions of Personal Memoir. Eight Gestures for a Biography with Laia Estruch, Mohamad Bitari, Ihosvanny Cisneros, Laura Alcalà, Fèlix Pons, Agnès Pe, Fito Conesa and Vignesh Melwani, who will activate several chapters of the book.

It will also be possible to visit the two new exhibitions: Tàpies: The Zen Imprint, curated by Núria Homs, focused on the artist’s interest in this Asian tradition, and A=A, B=B, curated by Pep Vidal, a collective exhibition that reflects on beauty and poetry in the process of creating scientific knowledge, with works by Daniel Bejar, Jorge Carrión, Agathe Casals, Lúa Coderch, Violeta Mayoral, Mariona Moncunill, Tanit Plana, Nimesh Ramesh Chahare, Irene Solà, Irena Visa, Ian Waelder, John Baldessari and Antoni Tàpies. In the evening, the inaugural event will feature the participation and performances of Raimon, Jordi Savall and Marina Herlop.

On the other hand, in the month of December, the regular cycles of public programming Tàpies’s Chairs and Today is Tàpies will be activated, which will analyse the life and career of the artist through the voices of creators from various generations and fields.

And, throughout 2024, the Fundació will present the Chiharu Shiota exhibition Chiharu Shiota: Threads of memory. The Japanese artist, known for the creation of enigmatic and contemplative installations made with wool, will intervene in the spaces of the Museum, with the intention of dialoguing with Tàpies-like symbology and establishing a game of correspondences.

In the month of July, a large retrospective of Antoni Tàpies will be shown, curated by Manuel Borja-Villel, with a wide selection of works from international museums and private collections, which will cover the extensive career of artist between the years 1943 and 2011.

Serge Attukwei Clottey will cover the facade of the Museum’s early-Modernista building, designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, with a second skin of tiles made from waste material. The proposal Beyond the Skin  will invite reflection on environmentalism and the current economic model through a public programme of dialogue, in collaboration with local migrant communities.

Public and educational programming will be essential to promote new initiatives from the artist’s world. The first Critical Writing Competition “Teresa Barba” will invite students from educational centres to write about current social problems based on Tàpies’ work. Furthermore, with the Incògnita i símbol project, higher artistic study centres will be offered the deployment of a prototype library, virtual and physical, theoretical and conceptual, or as an installation, linked to the iconography of the artist’s work.

In the academic field, the Càtedra Antoni Tàpies - UPF d’Art i Pensament Contemporanis, Antoni Tàpies’ Chair created with the complicity of Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), will be promoted to encourage the study and research of the artist’s work among the future generations. This alliance will also give rise to the international award for postdoctoral research The Hermeneutics of Gesture: Tàpies and the Present, to the creation of predoctoral research studies, to the participation of international researchers and to the organisation of seminars.

Finally, the project Institut de Derives Crítiques, set up by Xavier Bassas, Manuel Borja-Villel, Daniel García Andújar, Imma Prieto, Andrea Soto and Mabel Tapia, will periodically interpret the world based on the artist’s work, defining new readings and paradigms. All the sessions will be recorded and will generate original new material focused on the critical spirit and the dialogical will to build other realities.