Chronologically, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies will be the third venue for the exhibition that Manuel Borja-Villel is organising on the work of Antoni Tàpies within the framework of the celebration of the Centenary of the artist’s birth. The exhibition will feature a wide selection of works from national and international museums and private collections, covering the artist’s extensive career from 1943 to 2011.

Planned as a retrospective, the exhibition will present an opportunity to reconnect works that for a long time have remained dispersed and isolated from the creative moments in which they emerged. It will be an opportunity to recover and examine Tàpies’ formal and artistic concerns that resulted in such dazzling achievements throughout his career.

The exhibition ranges from his first drawings and self-portraits, as well as some works linked to the Dau al Set group, to his investigations into materials in the 1980s, including, of course, the matter paintings of the 1950s and his most experimental works with objects of the late and early 1970s. The exhibition will conclude with works from the last two decades of his life, when he continued to pursue his investigations into the formal and material, which had always been at the centre of his practice. Those were the years in which his work also responded to the new political and cultural situation of a democratic Spain. The extensive selection of works that make up this exhibition will offer us a new opportunity to review a career that resists being deciphered.

The uniqueness of this part of the tour will lie in its focus on the rarely seen and lesser-known works from private collections and international loans.

Exhibition organised by Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and Fundació Antoni Tàpies, within the framework of the Tàpies’ Year.