Antoni Tàpies: The Practice of Art

The Museu Tàpies presents the exhibition Antoni Tàpies: The Practice of Art.

Within the framework of the centenary of the birth of Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012), the exhibition The Practice of Art presents a synthesis of the research and development of the artist over eight decades of intense production. From his first works of the 1940s to those finished months before his death, Tàpies continually experimented with all types of supports, techniques and materials, freeing himself from the constraints of academic tradition. His drawings, collages, paintings, objects and sculptures, made of paper, cardboard, wood, marble dust, varnish or bronze among many other elements, propose new aesthetic ways of addressing the contemporary world, from a perspective based on matter and existence. Thanks to numerous loans from public institutions and private collections, both national and international, this retrospective constitutes one of the largest surveys of his work to date. 

Following the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels and the Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid, the final presentation of The Practice of Art takes as its starting point the memory contained in the space of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, now Museu Tàpies. Reflecting on some projects that have marked the institution’s history, the exhibition presents a non-linear journey through the artist’s career, articulated around different environments that establish relationships beyond chronology. When Tàpies states, for example, “I began painting eyes and I will end up painting eyes!”, he seems to be referring precisely to the cyclical or spiral time that imbues the whole of his work, in which motifs, materials and formats are repeated over the years, always with relevant differences. More than each individual work, it is the multiple links between the works—latent from the moment of their creation in the studio and recovered when exhibited together—that offer keys to understanding the complexity and relevance of Tàpies’ artistic practice.

Curated by Manuel Borja-Villel, this is one of the most comprehensive exhibitions devoted to the artist’s career. With over a hundred works from public institutions and private collections in Spain and elsewhere—some of them on show for the first time in Barcelona—Antoni Tàpies: The Practice of Art allows Tàpies’ work to be re-situated in the most recent history of art. The exhibition presents a journey from his first self-portraits to his final works, marked by a preoccupation with death, and taking in his material, political and also most intimate works, such as the “Teresa Series”, devoted to his wife.

The project is complemented by an extensive public and educational programme, as well as a catalogue with texts by the curator, Cathleen Chaffee, Carles Guerra and Pedro de Llano Neira, fragments of the interview between the curator and Tàpies from 1995 and the interview by Barbara Catoir from 1988, as well as a review of Antoni Tàpies’ career through key documents.