Antoni Tàpies

ANTONI TÀPIES PUIG (Barcelona, 1923 - 2012).
"El pa a la barca VI".
Painting, pencil and frottage on paper.
Signed.
Measurements: 39 x 55 cm.

Original work belonging to the series "El pa a la barca". This was the title of a folder that included a series of works on paper and works of correspondence between Tàpies and Joan Brossa. They would be published by the Sala Gaspar in Barcelona. The title itself resonates a strong symbolism, being bread an element that for Tàpies was loaded with universal meanings: basic food, symbol of life, sacrifice, spirituality and communion. As for the boat, it refers to the idea of physical and mental journey, as well as the idea of passing from one state to another, from the earthly to the spiritual. Stylistically, the work is imbued with the informalist aesthetics that the artist championed: a highly simple composition but charged with an intense visual poetics. The cross (an emblematic element of the artist) reminds us in this case of the mullions of a window. The artist combines the essential bichromy with the work of textures using the frottage technique.

Antoni Tàpies begins in art during his long convalescence from a lung disease. He progressively devoted himself more intensely to drawing and painting, and finally left his law studies to devote himself entirely to art. Co-founder of "Dau al Set" in 1948, he began to exhibit in the Salones de Octubre in Barcelona, as well as in the Salón de los Once held in Madrid in 1949. After his first individual exhibition in the Layetanas Galleries, he travels to Paris in 1950, with a scholarship from the French Institute. In these years he began his participation in the Venice Biennial, exhibited again at the Layetanas and, after a show in Chicago, in 1953 he had a solo exhibition at Martha Jackson's gallery in New York. From then on, his exhibitions, both group and solo, were held all over the world, in leading galleries and museums such as the Guggenheim in New York and the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. He has won awards such as the Prince of Asturias, the Praemium Imperiale of the Japan Art Association, the National Prize of Culture, the Grand Prize for Painting in France, etc., and anthologies have been dedicated to him in Tokyo (1976), New York (1977 and 2005), Rome (1980), Amsterdam (1980), Madrid (1980), Venice (1982), Milan (1985), Vienna (1986) and Brussels (1986). He is represented in major museums around the world, such as the foundation that bears his name in Barcelona, the Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Guggenheim in Berlin, Bilbao and New York, the Fukoka Art Museum in Japan, the MoMA in New York and the Tate Gallery in London.