Antoni Tàpies i Puig was born in Barcelona in 1923. Although he displayed artistic talent and curiosity at a young age, his family encouraged him to pursue a more traditional and secure path, which saw him read law. Creative nonetheless, Tàpies continued to produce art as a self-taught amateur artist. Doubly traumatised by, on a personal level, a severe pulmonary infection which required years of convalescence and, on a global level, the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War, Tàpies decided to dedicate himself fully to art once his body and country had somewhat recovered.
In 1943, he enrolled at the Valls Academy, studying first draughtsmanship, and then painting (1946). A student of modernism at large, he copied the likes of Van Gogh and Picasso, and began to frequent a collective of clandestine Catalan writers known as the ‘Baus’.
In 1948, his style evolved, causing controversies in its first outing at the Salo d’Octubre in Barcelona. Closer to surrealism and dadaism, Tàpies co-founded the Dau al Set movement and its eponymous publication. The following year, he met Joan Miró, who, along with Paul Klee, became central inspirations of this surreal period.
Tàpies held his first solo exhibition in 1950, at the Layetanas Galleries in his native city. During this period, he adopted a more abstract expression and turned towards the use of organic and vegetal materials. The 1950s also brought international recognition and his first awards: Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, French State Scholarship, and representing Spain at the 1952 Venice Biennale.
In the 1970s, the artist rode the pop art wave, accentuating colour and augmenting the scale of his work. This more media-friendly graphic design-adjacent shift explains the numerous collaborations of the 21st century. In 2000, he designed the poster for the Roland-Garros Tournament.
Grids, crosses, lines, lacerations and scars structure much of the artist’s composition in poor materials. These are layered with rectangular shapes that represent and define closed spaces. Abstract, informal, symbolist, graphic and surprisingly spiritual, Tàpies’ corpus is a personal embrace of everything the 20th century had to offer.
His contributions to modern and contemporary art have been amply acknowledged: Wolf Foundation Prize (1981); Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports (1981); Gold Medal of the Generalitat of Catalonia (1983); appointed Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters (1983) and later promoted to Commander (1988); Prince of Asturias Prize for the Arts (1990); UNESCO Picasso Medal (1993); and Velázquez Prize for Plastic Arts (2003), among many others. King Juan Carlos I awarded him the title of Marquis de Tàpies in 2010 for his ‘great contribution to the Spanish and world plastic arts’. He has honorary doctorates from the Berlin University of the Arts (1979), the Royal College of Art in London (1981), and the University of Barcelona (1988).
The artist passed away in 2012.
