Tapies, Antoni

The Catalan painter, graphic artist and sculptor is one of the best-known representatives of Informalism. His painting was initially inspired by artists such as Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, and later his art was also influenced by surrealists such as Miró, Ernst, and Klee.
 

With common natural products such as soil, metals, or sand and various duplication techniques, he created incredible works that exhibit a very special materiality. Tàpies became internationally famous in the 1950s. He won numerous awards, and his works were exhibited world-wide in big museums. In New York, he met artists such as Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning. He later also exhibited his works in New York alongside Joseph Beuys, Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Jean Tinguely, and Günther Uecker. For instance, in 1965 he created 36 lithographs for the collectors’ book "Nouvel-la". He established the foundation Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona in 1984 in order to support modern art and culture. The foundation still brings together exhibitions, workshops, and film series and possesses one of the most extensive Tàpies collections. In changing exhibitions, it also presents contemporary artists other than Tàpies.
 

Today, Tàpies’ works belong to the most-respected of his time and are sold for high prices world-wide. For the artist, however, money was never important. For his whole life, he followed a Buddhist mind-set and turned away from modern society, complaining that it was solely concerned with money. He regarded himself as a realist who tried to capture reality and make it comprehensible for others. Famous art critics called him a genius of abstraction. His prints still make up the majority of his oeuvre and are in high demand.