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Artist Projects

Celebrating the Centenary of the Birth of Antoni Tàpies

Published Friday, Sep 15, 2023

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.

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About the Artist

Antoni Tàpies is recognized as one of the leading artistic voices to emerge from postwar Europe. Working in parallel with global art movements including Abstract Expressionism, Gutai, Art Informel, Tachisme, and Arte Povera, Tàpies believed that his era required a new kind of existential expression. Tàpies’s oeuvre resides between figuration and abstraction, matter and mysticism, as manifested through his painting, sculpture, drawing, collage, and printmaking.

Learn More

  • Artist Projects — Celebrating the Centenary of the Birth of Antoni Tàpies, Sep 15, 2023