Celebrating the Centenary of the Birth of Antoni Tàpies

This year, Pace celebrates 100 years since the birth of Antoni Tàpies, an artist who refined a visual language inspired by a wide range of sources that coalesce into a complex fusion of materials, gestures, and symbols.

On Friday, September 15, (opens in a new window) Antoni Tàpies. The Practice of Art will open at Bozar - Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels—the first major exhibition in Belgium to showcase a complete view of the work of the artist—and will be the most important Tàpies retrospective in almost 20 years. Organized in collaboration with the Fundació Antoni Tàpies and curated by Manuel Borja-Villel, director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, this exhibition offers a comprehensive overview of Tàpies' work, comprising more than 120 paintings, drawings, and sculptures.

After his self-portraits and works influenced by Surrealism and Dadaism, the exhibition displays Tàpies' first “matterist” paintings, produced in the 1950s, which incorporate raw materials, marks and signs. Beyond the artist’s experimentation with form and material, which continued throughout his career, this retrospective reveals the mystical, philosophical and political dimensions of the Tàpies universe.