Antoni Tàpies

ANTONI TÀPIES PUIG (Barcelona, 1923–2012).
“Variations on a Musical Theme 20,” 1987.
Lithograph and embossing, edition 38/75.
Signed and numbered.
Work referenced in the catalog raisonné.
Measurements: 54 x 70 cm.

Antoni Tàpies’s series “Variations on a Musical Theme,” created in 1987, is one of the most interesting groups of works in his body of printmaking. It consists of several prints (lithographs combined with collography or collagraph) in which Tàpies explores the idea of musical variation translated into visual language.

Antoni Tàpies began his artistic career during a long convalescence from a lung disease. He gradually devoted himself more intensely to drawing and painting, and eventually abandoned his law studies to dedicate himself entirely to art. A co-founder of “Dau al Set” in 1948, he began exhibiting at the October Salons in Barcelona, as well as at the Salón de los Once held in Madrid in 1949. After holding his first solo exhibition at the Galerías Layetanas, he traveled to Paris in 1950 on a scholarship from the Institut Français. During these years, he began participating in the Venice Biennale, exhibited again at the Layetanas, and, following an exhibition in Chicago, held a solo show in 1953 at Martha Jackson’s New York gallery. Since then, he has held numerous exhibitions—both group and solo—around the world, at prominent galleries and museums such as the Guggenheim in New York and the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. He has received awards such as the Prince of Asturias Award, the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association, the National Culture Award, the Grand Prize for Painting in France, among others, and retrospective exhibitions 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). His works are represented in major museums around the world, including 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.