Tàpies, Antoni (1923– )

Spanish painter and sculptor. He is noted for his highly textured paintings created from mixed media. In works such as Large Brown Triangle (1963; Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris) he uses monochromatic, earthy tones and broken surfaces, either painted with graffiti or incised with a few lines.

Self-taught, Tàpies began to paint in a surrealist vein 1945–46, and in 1957 was a founding member of the El Paso group. His paintings of the late 1950s and early 1960s employ thick coatings of tar, bitumen, sand, and clay and such waste materials as wire, paper, rope, straw, and rags. In later works, real objects are affixed to the picture plane, such as mirrors and clothing, and assemblages created from furniture, for example Wardrobe (1973; Fundacío Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona).

In the early 1980s, he continued diversifying his mediums, producing his first ceramic sculptures and designing sets for Jacques Dupin's play L'Eboulement. In 1993, he and Cristina Iglesias represented Spain at the Venice Biennale, where his installation was awarded the Leone d'Oro. A retrospective exhibition was presented at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, and the Guggenheim Museum SoHo, New York, in 1994–95.