Tàpies, Antoni

Tàpies, Antoni

(Antoni Tàpies Puig) (äntō`nē tä`pēĕs pwēg), 1923–2012, Catalan artist. Largely self-taught, he became a painter after first studying law. His earliest works were inventive arrangements of objects against dark backgrounds; those of the 1940s–mid-50s show the influence of KleeKlee, Paul
, 1879–1940, Swiss painter, graphic artist, and art theorist, b. near Bern. Klee's enormous production (more than 10,000 paintings, drawings, and etchings) is unique in that it represents the successful combination of his sophisticated theories of art with a
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 and MiróMiró, Joan
, 1893–1983, Spanish surrealist painter. After studying in Barcelona, Miró went to Paris in 1919. In the 1920s he came into contact with cubism and surrealism.
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 and later of DubuffetDubuffet, Jean
, 1901–85, French painter and sculptor. Rejecting academic art training, Dubuffet divided his time during the 1920s and 30s between art and the wine business. In 1942 he turned solely to his artistic career.
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. His best-known works are those that he created in the late 1950s and 1960s. Their uniquely tactile surfaces are heavily built-up in subtle greys and browns made up of such materials as sand, marble dust, ground chalk, and earth, and those surfaces are marked, scratched, and gouged with enigmatic symbols.

Bibliography

See his Memoria personal (1977; tr. A Personal Memoir: Fragments for an Autobiobraphy, 2009); B. Catoir, Conversations with Antoni Tàpies (1991); R. Penrose, Tàpies (1978).