Antoni Tàpies

ANTONI TÀPIES (Barcelona, 1923–2012).
“Sinuós amb vermells,” 1990.
Painting and collage on marouflaged paper (originally created by the artist).
Provenance: Carles Taché Gallery, Barcelona.
Accompanied by a certificate issued by the Carles Taché Gallery.
Measurements: 201 x 102 cm.

A large-format work created in 1990, “Sinuós amb vermell” belongs to a particularly significant period in Antoni Tàpies’s mature career. That year, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona began its public activities; the artist received the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts and the Praemium Imperiale; and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía dedicated an extensive retrospective to him.

Against a dark, eroded-looking background, Tàpies depicts a large, sinuous red form that runs vertically across much of the surface, creating a powerful contrast between gesture and material. The title directly alludes to this serpentine path, whose continuity is interrupted and reactivated by scrapes, stains, strokes, and attached elements.

Among the signs that articulate the composition, the large T on the left and the sequence 1, 2, 3 in the lower band stand out—elements that encapsulate one of the most characteristic features of Tàpies’s artistic language: the expressive power of ambiguous signs. The “T” can simultaneously evoke the artist’s surname, the shape of a cross—a central motif in his imagery—or even other personal associations, while the numbers introduce an idea of order, rhythm, or succession without being fixed to a single meaning. It is precisely in this ambivalence that its power lies, as it triggers open-ended associations and transforms the surface into a space where writing, symbol, and matter merge into a single visual vocabulary.

The combination of paper, collage, graphic elements, and paint also ties in with the concept of writing developed by Tàpies: a form of writing that does not necessarily depend on legible words, but can be constructed through numbers, crosses, stains, scribbles, and marks on the material itself. In this work, the monumental scale of the format transforms this intimate vocabulary into an almost mural-like presence, while the large red form concentrates the energy of the entire composition.

Antoni Tàpies was one of the key figures in postwar European art. A co-founder of Dau al Set in 1948, he quickly gained widespread international recognition; in 1962, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York dedicated a solo exhibition to him, solidifying his presence on the American art scene. Throughout his career, he exhibited at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, and the Kunsthaus Zürich, and he also developed a significant career as a writer and art theorist. His work is represented in international collections such as those of MoMA and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.