Author Description

"This is the first in a series of six volumes on the important contemporary Spanish artist Antoni Tàpies, which is planned to contain his entire oeuvre. Volume 1 documents the beginning of his prolific career well into the years that saw the full consolidation of his world and language. This catalog of drawings, watercolors, paintings and sculptures contributed to a better understanding of the artist and his work at a time when his art is at the height of its maturity and international acclaim.Here are his early works in collage, and his paintings of the 1940s dominated by earth hues and smoke-stained colors and the graffitic figures and scratches which are characteristic of his subsequent works. Also included are his canvases from 1949 to 1953. In these Tàpies abandons all attempts to achieve his effects through the actual quality of the paint. Instead, he uses backgrounds made up of subtly differentiated tonal values. On these he superimposed or engraved geometric signs or deformed letters, such as in Mudrc, 1949. Also well represented in his later return to experimenting with materials, such as oil paint combined with crushed marble, powdered pigment, and latex. With these he created huge surfaces, covered with fossil-like imprints, creases, and thin, crude colors that appear to have been washed and denatured by the weather"--On dust jacket, volume 1 Complete Works.