Antoni Tàpies

ANTONI TÀPIES (Barcelona, 1923–2012).
“Profile,” 1987.
Carborundum engraving. Copy 80/99.
Work cited in Nuria Horns, *Tàpies Obra Gráfica / Graphic Work*, Vol. IV: 1987–1994, Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2009, no. 1127.
Signed and dated by hand.
Measurements: 56 x 76 cm.
In *Perfil*, created in 1987, Antoni Tàpies develops an image in which the reference to the body is reduced to its most elementary expression. The title alludes to a silhouette or outline, but the artist avoids any descriptive representation and transforms the idea of a profile into an open sign, situated between figuration and abstraction.The composition is built upon a surface of great material and visual intensity, in which strokes, patches, graphic elements, and dark forms seem to emerge and vanish amid different levels of texture. Any possible evocation of a face or a human figure is deliberately left open. Rather than depicting a specific body, Tàpies seems to reduce it to its trace: an incomplete silhouette, a mark that remains on the surface. This ambiguity is particularly characteristic of his artistic language of the 1980s
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 Prize for Painting in France, and 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 Guggenheims in Berlin, Bilbao, and New York, the Fukuoka Art Museum in Japan, MoMA in New York, and the Tate Gallery in London.