Antoni Tàpies

Martha Jackson Gallery, New York
Galleria Toninelli, Rome
Private Collection, Switzerland
Private Collection, Madrid

Bari, Pinacoteca Provinciali, Aspetti dell'Informale, 1971, p. 78, no. 101, illustrated
Milan, Palazzo Reale, Tàpies Milano, 1985, p. 48, no. 25, illustrated in colour
Locarno, Casa Rusca, Antoni Tàpies, 1998, p. 97, illustrated in colour
Milano, Galleria Tega, Antoni Tàpies, 2006-07, p. 30, illustrated in colour

Anna Agustí, Tàpies, Obra Completa: 1961 - 1968, Vol. 2, Barcelona 1990, p. 200, no. 1273, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the red tends more towards bourdeaux red in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are a few cracks to the surface and a small number of unobtrusive rub marks to the background towards the upper left corner. There is some light canvas draw to all four corners. Extremely close inspection reveals a hairline horizontal crack towards the centre of the composition which appears to have been stabilised, visible only upon examination of the reverse of the work. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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Arc Rosa is a complex, furtive piece from the proclaimed Spanish artist, Antoni Tàpies. Upon his canvas, Tàpies has piled cement, rocks, sand and clay and carved into this newly created surface, fashioning a tapestry of marks and incisions. In the centre of the composition stands a dominant symbol, which appears like the letter A with a cross through it.  The piece itself almost becomes a wall bearing this poignant marking, which in turn could be a piece of graffiti, an act of defiance. Much of Tàpies’ aesthetic of the 1960s developed out of his reminiscence of the walls of his native Catalonia, decaying and textured due to time and wear, and indeed the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. The present work could almost be an excavated fragment of these bullet-ridden, graffiti-tagged walls. Having witnessed the fighting from behind these walls, they are deeply entrenched within Tàpies’ memory, and he carries their textures forward in his artistic endeavours to convey existential meaning. The rouge arc, pierced and cracked by symbolic mark making, is highlighted against the grey tones of the background, seemingly drawing the viewer towards the symbol within it as a focus point.

Executed in 1964, when Tàpies was at the peak of his informalist practice, Arc Rosa is an example of Tàpies’ ‘matter paintings’. The thick impasto the artist has created upon his canvas rejects any traditional understanding of artistic material; here the artist has broken down any artistic presumptions by building his canvas with everyday, earthly materials into his collage. Using material and their inherent qualities as his area of study, he questions the connection between such earthly matter and its underlying, transcendent properties. In this distinctive work from the artist, Tàpies has viscerally scratched, punctured and layered his materials upon his picture plane, as the result of an impulsive artistic force seemingly coming from an unconscious realm provoking deeper engagement from the viewer. Tàpies’ highly physical methods of execution have resulted in a gritty, stimulating work of art in Arc Rosa, exploring both the inherent power of physical material and the marks that human beings can make upon it.