Antoni Tàpies was born in Barcelona in 1923 and started painting in 1946. Co-founder of the Dau al Set movement, he met Miro in 1948. After being involved in the Surrealist period, Tàpies became interested in philosophy and oriental art, in particular calligraphy. From the time of 1953 onwards, he detached himself from Surrealism and began to work in abstract with raw materials, stains, and symbols. In 1970, his torn and scratched compositions expressed an attitude of protest. His works have been described as battlefields where wounds are multiplied to infinite numbers, evoking a true reflection of a broken and anguished world. Tàpies was not a subject painter and his works are not just graffiti, tracings, prints, and glyphs. As if they were metaphysical walls, he liked to say that they were all built from dust, ash, soil, the destruction of catastrophe, cosmic contemplation, and inner meditation. Tàpies desired to express two primary concerns through his art, the first being his homeland, Catalonia, from which he was long distanced, taking refuge in Paris. The second was the human being. This was evoked in his art through the body, and through the everyday objects which surround it. Antoni Tàpies was part of the very exclusive circle of contemporary artists whose lives Spain has honoured by creating museums and institutions in their names (Dali, Miro, Tàpies).
