Antoni Tapies @ Perez Art Museum, Miami

"There are a number of reasons why I like to use banal, everyday objects.  It may be partly because the objects that surround us in our everyday lives are the most accessible ones, the first ones you see, but I also use them because I want to exalt even the smallest, most insignificant objects. This goes along with the ideas of mysticism and particularly what Saint Theresa used to say about how you can find God even in pots and pans.  The cosmic quality I like to give things like chairs, scissors, a pair of espadrilles, is a way of showing that even an armpit can be every bit as transcendental as the most conventional sacred image."   -- Antoni Tapies.

"Take a look at the simplest of objects.  Let's take, for example, an old chair.  It seems like nothing.  But think of the universe comprised within it; the sweaty hands cutting the wood that used to be a robust tree, full of energy, in the middle of a luxuriant forest by some high mountains.  The loving work that built it, the joyful anticipation of the one who bought it, the tired bodies it has helped, the pains and the joys it must have endured, whether in fancy halls or in a humble dining room in your neighborhood.  Everything, everything shares life and has its importance! Even the most worn down of chairs carries inside the initial force of the sap climbing from the earth, out there in the forest, and will still be useful the day when, broken into kindling, it burns in some fireplace."

-- Antoni Tapies.

Fundació Antoni Tàpies

Today we visited the Fondació Antoni Tàpies. which is housed in an outstanding Modernista building in the tony Exiample district, originally designed as a publishing house in 1885 by Lluis Domènech i Montaner, the same architect who designed the Palau de la Musica.  It was the first structure to incorporate the industrial materials of exposed brick and iron into the city center and shows influences of Islamic art in its decoration.  It seems only fitting that Tàpies should house his museum in a former publishing house given the fact that Tàpies' family was involved in book publishing and selling since the 19th century.  When the Fondació opened its doors in 1990, Tàpies topped the building with a sculpture titled Cloud and Chair. 

Antoni Tàpies was born in Barcelona in 1923 into a cultured, middle-class, Catalan nationalist family.  While recovering from a lung disease, he spent an increasing amount of time drawing and painting and thus an artist was born. By the forties, he was already exhibiting his works and throughout the fifties and sixties, Tapies was becoming known in America as well.  His work dealing with post-WWII imagery shared a sensibility with artists on both sides of the Atlantic.

After the Second World War and the dropping of the atomic bomb, Tàpies soon expressed an interest in matter - earth, dust, atoms and particles, which led him to use materials foreign and new to traditional artistic expression as well as experiments with new techniques.  In the fifties and sixties, Tapies incorporated imagery of discarded objects from every day life into his work, often using subject matter that is generally regarded as repulsive or fetishistic. 

Moreover, Tàpies’ work has always been reflective of the political and social events of the time. In the late sixties and early seventies his political commitment in opposition to the dictatorship deepened and the works from that period have a marked character of protest. 

The works of the last years are overwhelmingly a reflection on pain - both physical and spiritual and understood as an integral part of life. Influenced by Buddhist thought, Tàpies believed that a better knowledge of pain allows us to soften its effects and therefore improve our quality of daily life. 

The collection of the Fondació Tàpies includes substantial holdings of Tàpies works as well as other contemporary artists.  While his work is sometimes challenging, the themes expressed in his work; humanitarianism, the relationship between art and and nature, incarnation in the Christian faith, left wing politics and art as an alchemy or magic and Zen meditation are universal and quite compelling.

Tàpies enjoyed a long career.  He died in 2012 at the age of 88.   

Art Girls with Sock.  You might remember this from  the movie "Vickie Christina Barcelona."

The library is a central focal point of the building's architecture and is available for use by the public.  

For more information on Tapies, click here:
http://www.fundaciotapies.org/site/spip.php?rubrique64