Antoni Tàpies

ANTONI TÀPIES (Barcelona, 1923–2012).
“Paisatge,” 2000.
Carborundum engraving. Print no. 37/45.
Work referenced in Núria Homs, *Tàpies. Obra Gràfica / Graphic Work*, vol. V, 1995–2011, Barcelona, Gustavo Gili, 2014, no. 1578.
Signed and dated in pencil.
Measurements: 49 x 50 cm.
The combination of carborundum and aquatint allows Tàpies to develop a rich variety of textures, densities, and hallmarks. The result reflects his unique conception of material as a plastic and expressive element, a characteristic of much of his artistic career. Rather than a descriptive representation of the landscape, the work offers an interpretation articulated through signs, marks, traces, and material qualities.Created in 2000, the piece belongs to a fully established period in Tàpies’s oeuvre, in which his artistic language is characterized by a synthesis of abstraction, materiality, and graphic expression. Printmaking was not a secondary activity in Antoni Tàpies’s career, but rather a fundamental field of experimentation that he pursued continuously throughout his career. The Antoni Tàpies Foundation specifically notes that printmaking offered him a wide range of expressive possibilities and that one of his main challenges was to transfer to paper the richness of textures he had developed in his painting.
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 held exhibitions around the world, 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, 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 Guggenheims in Berlin, Bilbao, and New York, the Fukuoka Art Museum in Japan, MoMA in New York, and the Tate Gallery in London.