The Tàpies Year celebrates the artist’s legacy with a great retrospective and explores his relationship with Japan and science

by time news

A great retrospective to review a career “that resists being deciphered” and that will go through Brussels, Madrid and Barcelona; vanishing points into Japanese tradition, science, and activism; dialogues with avant-garde filmmakers and ‘influencers’… The Year Tapies warm up its engines and prepare to commemorate the centenary of the birth of the Catalan artist with a program of exhibitions and activities that seeks to celebrate the life and work of Tàpies and underline the validity of his thought. «He was a man linked to universal values ​​that are fully valid; It is important to vindicate a thought that went a long way with issues such as environmentalism or colonialism”, Ferran Rodés assured during the presentation of the program.

The president of the board of trustees of the Antoni Tàpies Foundation has also taken the opportunity to express his wish that the centenary will allow the genius of abstract art to be rescued from a certain oblivion into which, he assures, great creators are falling. «What is happening to Tàpies is happening to many European artists of the second half of the 20th century: we are forgetting them. There are exceptions, and they are always the same: who has a state or a community behind. Tàpies does not have a State, but it does have a city. And a country”, Rodés reflected. «It is necessary to reconnect with the closest public opinion. If we succeed, this centenary will already have been worth it”, he added before recalling that Tàpies was «deeply Catalan and universal».

All in all, and despite Rodés’ words, one of the axes of the Tàpies Year will be a great retrospective curated by Manuel Borja-Villel and organized by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and the Tàpies Foundation, which will open at the Bozar- Center For Fine Arts in Brussels on September 14, will travel to the Reina Sofía in February 2024 and will arrive in Barcelona from July of that same year with a version focused on the least seen and best-known works. “We started in Brussels to internationalize the figure of Tàpies”, highlighted Núria Homs, curator of the centenary, about an exhibition that will cover the entire career of the artist and will travel from 1943 to 2011 to gather pieces scattered over many years and “recover and examine in depth the formal and artistic concerns» of the Barcelona creator.

At the Tàpies Foundation, the epicenter of a celebration that will start on December 13, coinciding with the day the artist would have turned 100, the Year will begin following the japanese footprint in Tapies; will explore the relationship between art and science from the book of talks ‘The new vision of the world’; and will show for the first time in Spain and in collaboration with the Idemitsu Museum Of Arts in Tokyo, the work of Buddhist monk Sengai.

With a start-up budget of around two million euros and «Tàpies lives. Live Tàpies” as the motto, the centenary, which still has gaps to fill, the Tàpies Year, will also promote an exhibition on the artist’s social and political commitment and will seek “new perspectives to open cracks in the canonical story”. For example, the ‘influencer’ Juliana Canet and the filmmaker Albert Serra, the latter with a film about the universe of Tapies based on mysticism and materialism. “It will be a surprise, but the irreverent look from him will surely be very good,” Homs advances.

As an extra ball, the Foundation hopes to resolve the competition for the direction of the center shortly, a position that has been vacant since Carles Guerra resigned in 2020.



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