To turn upside down my vision Tàpies at MACBA (3)

In Tàpies’ early works from the 1940s, the face plays an important part. Whether in the middle of the canvas surrounded by a halo, or turned upside down and schematised as in a self-portrait exercise, or traced in one elementary gesture, it acquires a persistence and centrality that the artist himself relates to the idea of a talisman or an icon. More than representing or reproducing things, Tàpies soon realised that the painting itself should be a thing, an object charged with sufficient energy to unleash emotions in the viewer. ‘I used to say that “the value of presence” had to be as strong as that of a talisman or an icon, which, by simply touching them with your hand or with your body, release beneficial effects.’ Referring to these early years, the artist wrote in A Personal Memoir: ‘From such meditations came a feeling of the idea that brought man to create his reality, although it was impossible to capture that idea with just the senses or normal reason. That’s why I thought it necessary to turn upside-down my vision.’

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