Antoni Tàpies

"Painting can be everything.  It can be a brilliant sun ray.  It can be a man's footstep on life's path or why not a foot stamping the ground to say 'enough'.  It can be the soft air full of morning promise or an acrid prison stench.  It can be blood stains from a wound or the song of all people in the blue and yellow sky.  It can be what we are, what is today, now, what will be always"  The artist cited in: London, Waddington Galleries, Antoni Tàpies, 2006, p. 7

Executed in 1958, Antoni Tàpies's exquisite All Black. No. LXXI perfectly embodies the aesthetic alchemy that is so characteristic of this artist's best work.  The deep rich tones are instantly hypnotic, drawing the viewer into an endless dark abyss.  As if a black hole in space, the present work has an outer worldliness which is at once intriguing and mysterious.  Tàpies developed a style that involved covering his canvases with a thick, highly textured base using elements such as clay, marble dust and in this instance, cement combined with oil paint.  These heavily layered surfaces meld together a variety of elements and Tàpies was fascinated with the contrast of these different materials.  The incorporation of the cement in the inner dominating circle creates a variety of tonal values, ranging from the darkest inky black to soft grey.  These tones are reflected in the very subtle sparkly quality of the cement which almost recalls the twinkling of stars.  Tàpies was fascinated by the spiritual and mystical aspects of his art and sought to render this visible in his art.

As Juan Eduardo Cirlot reflects: "The process of matter, considered as a receptacle of the spirit, which is inherent to all informalism, leads us back to alchemical symbolism.  Some of Tàpies' paintings, created between 1956 and 1958, display strange images in which a series of almost regular discs or masses of matter are distributed, with a certain flaky softness, over a material background.  There is barely any contrast in tone, and those masses appear to float in a kind of hazy movement, similar to that caused in a liquid by boiling" (Juan Eduardo Cirlot in: Exhibition Catalogue, Barcelona, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Antoni Tàpies. Retrospective., 2004, p. 90).

Tàpies believes that the notion of material must also be understood from the point of view of Mediaeval mysticism as magic, mimesis and alchemy.  This is how we must regard his wish for his works to have the power to transform our inner selves.  Tàpies arrived at his method of working following a long convalescence from lung disease, where he was immobile and forced to explore his imagination and a mystical interior space.  Confined to his bed, and facing a wardrobe and mirror, Tàpies spent most of his time drawing and travelling in his mind on a mystical journey and it was here where he began his first experiments with art.

Intrinsically charged, these works would establish Tàpies on the international map by the end of the 1950s, as he worked alongside other prominent artists of the period including Antonio Saura, Manolo Millares and many other Spanish Informalist artists.  A comparable work, Grey and Green Painting, 1957 is in the collection of the Tate, London and shares similar formal qualities and the same dark palette.  Tàpies was influential in co-founding the first Post-War movement in Spain known as Dau-al-Set in 1948 which was closely linked to the Surrealist and Dadaist movements, pioneered by the poet Joan Brossa.  Originally, Tàpies began as a Surrealist painter and he references the influences of Joan Miró and Paul Klee in his early work.  He later adopted Abstract Expressionist techniques and became celebrated for working in the style coined as Arte Povera.  This style came to dominate Tàpies' oeuvre as he instantly adopted found objects and non-convential materials and incorporated them into his art.  When in 1953 he began working in mixed media, it was considered a breakthrough for the artist and considered to be his most original contribution to art.