Antoni Tàpies: Painter, Sculptor and Art Theorist

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Antoni Tàpies i Puig is one of the most famous artists to come out of Catalunya, and one of the most important representatives of informalism. And as with more than one famous artist throughout history—Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol, Edvarch Munch, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Sam Francis, to name a few—Antoni Tàpies’ life took a turn towards the artistic when he contracted a serious illness.

Artistic Beginnings

Born on December 13, 1923 in Barcelona, Tàpies was the son of a lawyer and a bookseller. There is a small bronze plaque at Carrer de la Canuda, 39, marking the place of the artist’s birth.

He started drawing while still a student at the Liceo Práctico school; his first serious artistic works were created during a long convalescence from tuberculosis that started when he was 17 years old. He spent most of 1942 and 1943 in bed, at home and in sanatoriums, copying drawings and paintings by artists such as Picasso, Matisse and Van Gogh. It was during this period that he also became interested in philosophy and existentialism through the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietszche, Arthur Schopenhauer, and others. In 1944, he began studying law at the University of Barcelona while also briefly studying art at the Valls Academy; he eventually dropped out of law school to work on art full-time.

By the 1940s, Tàpies was exhibiting his work and starting to formalize his artistic philosophy. He co-founded the magazine Dau al Set in 1948, which was dedicated to promoting the post-World War II and Spanish Civil War artistic movement in Catalunya of the same name, along with influential thinker and poet Joan Brossa, philosopher Arnau Puig, and painters Modest Cuixart, Joan Josep Tharrats, and Joan Ponç. Dau al Set became associated with the idea of translating the human subconscious into art, and was deeply influenced by existentialism and by the surrealist and dadaist thinkers of that era. Around the same time, Tàpies had his first major show: in Madrid, at the Salón de los Once, in 1949.

His interest in iconografic art and symbolism grew thanks to his fascination with surrealist, cubist and impressionist artists such as Swiss-German painter Paul Klee and Catalan painter Joan Miró, and he began experimenting with heavily textured pieces, coating his canvases in layer upon layer of pigment, and incorporating geometric symbols and color studies into his work. He developed an interest in primitive art (Pre-Columbian, and various ancient cultures), which contrasted with his passion for the extremely modern subjects of science and politics, and the overlap between them that was taking place with the development of the atomic bomb.

In the late 1940s, Tàpies also started experimenting with graphic work, poster design, engraving, lithographs and book illustration, often in collaboration with famous writers and poets, such as his contemporary Joan Brossa, French poet André Du Bouchet, Japanese surrealist Shuzo Takiguchi, and many others.

International Success

The early 1950s were big years for Tàpies. In 1950, the artist had his first solo exhibition, at the Laietanes Galleries in Barcelona, and his work was also included in the Carnegie International exhibition in Pittsburgh. He spent time in Paris in 1950 and 1951 thanks to a scholarship from the French Institute of Barcelona, where he met Picasso and other important figures from the art world’s avant-garde, which deeply impacted his perception of art in both a practical and a philosophical sense. In 1953, Tàpies had his first solo shows in the United States, at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York City and the Marshall Field Art Gallery in Chicago; he also won the Gran Prix at the Sao Paulo Biennale.

It was during this same year that he began experimenting with collage, grattage, and other ways of adding texture: cutting, perforating, marking, scraping, layering the canvas, even adding dirt or sand, until the piece appeared to have weathered the passage of time. Traditional painting methods were combined with innovative, daring, abstract techniques that are some of the hallmarks of the informalism school of artistic thought.

The groundbreaking pieces he produced in the 1950s brought him international recognition, and his works were shown at the Guggenheim in New York, the Venice Biennale, Documenta in Kassel, and many other prestigious showcases. The Dau al Set group disbanded in 1954 due to diverging personal and artistic paths, but Tàpies never forgot the influence this set of friends had on his development as an artist.

Art and Catalan Politics

In the 1960s, his art grew simultaneously more symbolic and more political, as he began incorporating more anthropomorphic objects—elements in the shapes of human body parts, sometimes sexual, sometimes not—as well as references to the Catalan political situation under Fransisco Franco. His work also included more and more symbols—numbers, letters, crosses, triangles, stars—as well as writing, footprints, geometric designs,and an increased use of all kinds of found objects. This marked the development of a unique artistic vocabulary of his own that diverged from the techniques of his predecessors and contemporaries.

The artist’s political views gradually became more pronounced and more public, and not only in his work. He was arrested at the Capuchin convent in Sarrià (Barcelona) in 1966, for participating in a clandestine meeting designed to create Spain’s first democratic student union. In 1970, he attended a demonstration at the monastery at Montserrat, in protest of the Burgos trials, which were military trials of supposed enemies of the Franco regime. Tàpies’ work throughout this period reflected the political and social turmoil in Spain and specifically in Catalunya as the dictator’s rule drew to an end. It was during this time that Tàpies was also influenced by the international pop art wave; he started incorporating larger and larger found objects into his pieces, such as full-size chairs.

In time, representations of his work would be displayed in important museums all over the world, from in New York to Los Angeles, and from London to Berlin, Paris, and Zurich—including, of course, Barcelona.

Awards and Increased Experimentation 

In the 1980s, his works grew in physical size, his brushstrokes grew broader, and he began experimenting with varnish. The unpredictability of the transparent, layered gloss combined with his idiosyncratic artistic techniques added what the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid called “abstractions of disturbing ambiguity” to his work. It’s also around this time that Tàpies became interested in Asian art, Buddhism and the writings of Japanese monks from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; this influence can be seen in many pieces he produced in this era and in the following decade.

With increased experimentation also came increased recognition. In 1981, Tàpies received the Gold Medal of Fine Arts from the Generalitat de Catalunya, and the UNESCO Picasso Medal. In 1984, the United Nations Association in Spain awarded him the Peace Prize, and he received the National Painting Prize from the French Government. During the 1980s he continued to voice his political opinions through art: he designed a series of anti-apartheid posters for the World Committee of artists, and for the Catalan Committee for Peace and Disarmament in honor of the tenth anniversary of the death of Chilean doctor and activist Salvador Allende. Tápies was also given an honorary doctorate at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, the Praemium Imperiale for painting, the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts, and many other awards.

In the final two decades of his life, he continued to win awards and honors, such as the Herbert Boeckl Prize in 1993, or his induction into the Catalan Academy of Fine Arts Sant Jordi in 2003, but his work dealt with increasingly somber themes: sickness, pain, death, melancholy, the universe at large and humanity’s relationship to it. However, he always found ways to express what he was feeling through his work, using his extensive symbolic vocabulary, and through trying out new techniques in his work—which he continued to do up until his death, in spite of deteriorating eyesight and tremors in his hands.

Apart from his paintings, Tàpies also experimented with sculptures, ceramics, tapestries and stage sets throughout his career. He was also the author of numerous essays and several books that reflected his personal, artistic, and political views: La pràctica de l’art (The Practice of Art) (1970), L’art contra l’estètica (Art Against Aesthetics) (1974), Memòria personal (Personal Memory) (1977), La realitat com a art (Reality as Art) (1982), Per un art modern i progressista (For Modern and Progressive Art) (1985), Valor de l’art (Value of Art) (1993) and L’art i els seus llocs (Art and It’s Places) (1999).

In 2010, King Juan Carlos I gave the artist the noble title of Marquis in honor of his contributions to the world of the arts. Antoni Tàpies died on February 6, 2012.

The Fundació Antoni Tàpies

In 1984, the artist created the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, with the goal of studying and disseminating the ideas behind contemporary art; specifically, his own, but also other artists and influences that he considered to be important. Today, the Foundation owns one of the most complete collections of Tàpies’ work in the world, which is composed mostly by donations by the artist himself and his wife, Teresa. The foundation’s extensive library also contains collections of Pre-Colombian art, African art, Asian art and other collections that had a profound impact on Tàpies’ artistic vision and development. The more recent additions include newsreels, videos and publications on architecture, design, photography, film, the decorative arts and other modern disciplines.

The Foundation installed itself in its current location in 1990, in the building that is the former home of the Editorial Montaner y Simón publishing house. The building is a work of art: originally constructed in 1880-1882 by famed Modernist architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner, it was later restored and remodeled by the architects Lluís Domènech Girbau and Roser Amadó. It is crowned by a massive metal sculpture created by Tàpies himself, titled Núvol i cadira (Cloud and Chair).

In celebration of the centenary of the artist’s birth, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies presented a year’s worth of activities and exhibitions from December 2023 through December 2024. This initiative was designed to reinforce the Foundation’s commitment to preserving Tàpies’ work and promoting his ideas both nationally and internationally, and looking for new ways to promote his art. Part of this approach includes plans to attract the local public with on-site events—temporary exhibits, lectures, debates, film screenings and educational opportunities—as well as alliances and exchanges with other cultural institutions.