Tàpies as a Symptom

The name Tàpies is synonymous with a problematic modernity. His work occupies the latter half and demonstrates an extraordinary understanding of the cultural movements of his time. Nonetheless, the figure of Tàpies revolves around his great individualism, marked by an autobiography constructed from personal memories that has acquired a confessional and mythical character. While it cannot be said that his work was ignored by the great museums of modernity and the history of the art of the twentieth century, the fact remains that institutions have been reluctant to take on board those tensions of which Tàpies is a symptom.

An important part of Tàpies’ work was made under the Franco dictatorship. During this period he became an international icon: despite the dictatorship’s climate of repression, it would seem that the articulation of an aesthetic modernity was still possible. And yet, this widely successful modernity – represented by abstraction in full accord with the equally successful liberalism of the time – was lacking a critical perspective. In contrast to the Anglo-Saxon world, where modernity had a double strand (hence the terms modernity-modernism), Tàpies represented a modernity lacking in social correspondence. Hence his reputation as a hermetic and complex artist.

It was not until the advent of democracy that the political dimension of Tàpies’ work became apparent. But, when the moment came, his aesthetic identity had not yet changed substantially. In fact, the same forms of the preceding years would now be read in a more political and critical way. This turned Tàpies into a model of peripheral modernity, forced to negotiate its international circulation and its symbolic value both inside the country and abroad. In the process of this negotiation, a form of production of genuine and unique signs arose that gave Tàpies’ work its ambiguous and polysemic character.