Antoni Tàpies

Barcelona, 1923 – Barcelona, 2012

He started painting in a self-taught way after leaving law studies. Towards 1945, the dedication to painting was increasingly intense. He was interested in the philosophy of Heidegger and Sartre, as well as in Eastern thought. In 1948 he was one of the founders of the ‘Dau al Set’ group and the magazine of the same name. In the same way as all its members, he developed a universe of dreamlike beings and spaces close to Miró, Klee and Ernst. In 1948 he exhibited at the I Saló d’Octubre in Barcelona and met Joan Miró. In 1949 he took part in the exhibition “An aspect of young Catalan painting” at the French Institute in Barcelona, ​​where he was seen by Eugeni d’Ors, who invited him to the VII Salón de los Onze in Madrid (1950). Thanks to a scholarship from the French Institute, he traveled to Paris in 1950 and met Picasso. In 1955 he founded the short-lived Taüll group (Aleu, Cuixart, Mercadé, Muxart, Guinovart and Tharrats). At the beginning of the 1950s, a crucial stage began for the artist in which he not only found his own informalist language, but also gained international recognition. In 1990, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies was inaugurated in Barcelona, ​​where a complete collection of works by him is gathered. In parallel to his artistic activity, he has also developed a task as a writer and theorist that has given rise to several publications: The practice of art (1970); Art against aesthetics (1974); Personal Memoir (1977); For a modern and progressive art (1985)…