Antoni Tàpies

ANTONI TÀPIES (Barcelona, 1923–2012).
“Pissarra,” 1972.
Carborundum engraving. Number 58/75.
Work reproduced in Mariuccia Galfetti, “Tapies, obra gráfica 1947–1972,” Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, no. 287, p. 177.
Signed and dated by hand.
Measurements: 58 x 76 cm.
In *Pissarra*, created in 1972, Antoni Tàpies transforms a seemingly ordinary surface into a space laden with marks, signs, and matter. The title itself—"pissarra," meaning "chalkboard" in Catalan—is significant: the work can be understood as a surface intended to be marked, written on, and erased, yet one that always retains the traces of what has taken place upon it.
The composition is built around a dense, dark surface, crisscrossed by signs and gestures that seem to emerge from the material itself. Tàpies does not use these elements as conventional writing, but rather as open signs, whose function is both visual and physical. Created at a pivotal moment in the artist’s career, *Pissarra* encapsulates some of the essential features of his artistic language of the 1970s: chromatic austerity, the importance of texture, the incorporation of the sign, and the desire to bring the graphic work closer to the physical presence of painting and the wall.
Tàpies took up drawing and painting at a very young age, and during the 1940s he came into contact with the European avant-garde and contemporary thought. In 1948, he was one of the founders of the Dau al Set group. Throughout his career, he exhibited worldwide, in prominent galleries and museums such as the Guggenheim in New York and the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. His awards include the Prince of Asturias Award, the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association, the National Culture Award, the Grand Prix de la Peinture in France, among others, and retrospective exhibitions have been dedicated to him in Tokyo, New York, Rome, Amsterdam, Madrid, Venice, Milan, Vienna, and Brussels. His works are represented in major national and international museums, such as the foundation that bears his name in Barcelona, the Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Guggenheim museums in Berlin, Bilbao, and New York, the Fukuoka Art Museum in Japan, MoMA in New York, and the Tate Gallery in London.