The reopening of the Tapies Foundation

The painter and sculptor, Antonio Tapies was born in Barcelona in 1923 into bourgeois family, lover of the arts and culture that had developed its business in the publishing industry since the 19th century. This family tradition inspired in the young Tapies a strong attraction to books that was accentuated when he was suffering a lung disease and remained bedridden for a long time. The magic of literature and the contemplative life led him drawing and painting, putting an end to his law career.

The work of Tapies is strongly marked by the great transformations of thought and the birth of intellectual movements that influenced the Arts in Europe. One of the major influences is, no doubt, the discovery of Existentialism in the texts of Jean Paul Sartre which left an indelible stamp on his work and life. Another influence was Picasso.

In 1948, together with a group of young artists and Catalan intellectuals, they founded the Dau group al Set, which broke with conventional old movements in painting and art, and aligned itself with the avant-garde. In 1950, thanks to a scholarship to Paris, he began to interact with the revolutionary ideas of the Left, who will influenced his painting to inch closer to complete abstraction. In 1951, he starts his individual evolution towards abstract informalism, based on his research on the pictorial matter as the expressive means of the arts, wherin he assigned a total value to the field to the form.

In 1990 in Barcelona, the Tapies Foundation opened to spread the knowledge of contemporary art and display his own works. The Foundation promotes culture and contemporary art.

This March the Tapies Foundation reopened, after renovations. It has upgraded its infrastructure, reaffirming itself as a space for research between disciplines and exhibition formats, and as a referential centre for the preservation, dissemination and research on the work of Antonio Tapies.
This beautiful and invaluable heritage left by the Catalan artist is a magical journey to the world of thought and art that those who visit the city can’t miss, just as you cannot not take advantage of apartments in Barcelona.

Tags: Antoni Tapies, Antonio Tapies, Tapies, Tapies Foundation