Antoni Tapies
Antoni Tapies
Antoni Tàpies i Puig, 1st Marquess of Tàpieswas a Spanish painter, sculptor and art theorist, who became one of the most famous European artists of his generation...
NationalitySpanish
ProfessionSculptor
Date of Birth13 December 1923
CountrySpain
country teacher real
Which country is real, mine or the teacher's? My wish is that we might progressively lose our confidence in what we think we believe and the things we consider stable and secure, in order to remind ourselves of the infinite number of things still waiting to be discovered.
wall suffering age
The dramatic sufferings of adults and all the cruel fantasies of those of my own age, who seemed abandoned to their own impulses in the midst of so many catastrophes, appeared to inscribe themselves on the walls around me.
people world want
My illusion is to have something to transmit. If I can't change the world, at least I want to change the way people look at it.
art opposites purpose
Obviously, the intention was not to go back to images traditionally valued as worthy or holy images and shapes, but exactly the opposite; its main purpose had to be to realise as sacred art, anything which so far had been regarded as of little value and pitiful.
wrestling color painting
They were wrestling with canvases, using violent colors and huge brush strokes. I arrived with gray, silent, sober, oppressed paintings. One critic said they were paintings that thought.
views ideas political
I never view aesthetic ideas as having an existence purely of their own but as a function they have in connection with political or moral values.
mean humility men
With my work I attempt to help man to overcome his alienation; I do this by surrounding his daily life with objects, which confront him in a tactile way with the final and deepest problems of our existence. I want the means that I employ to create the necessary stimulus to be as direct as possible. Instead of giving a sermon on humility, I often prefer to depict humility itself.
artist ideas chinese
All my pictures are a kind of revision of my original idea. This is surely very different from the way in which Japanese or Chinese artists work: their themes are pre-ordained, whereas mine are invented at will.
religious art loss
In our world, in which religious images are losing their meaning, in which our customs are getting more and more secular, we are losing our sense of the eternal. I think it's a loss that has done a great deal of damage to modern art. Painting is a return to origins.
space shapes firsts
A cross could be a shape for expressing something spacious, such as the coordinators of space. That could be called its first significance or its first relevance.
artist roots white
Starting with approaching the spot where the painting is to be done, meanwhile realising the emptiness of the mind, up to the method of 'the flying white', of the rule of the singular stroke of the brush... there is a proper tradition in which the artist is fully aware of the fact that only the pure and empty spontaneity enables him to embrace without hesitating all apparitions and to truly penetrate into the roots of things.
artist perspective experience
The artist has to make the viewer understand that his world is too narrow, he has to open up to new perspectives.
philosophy reflection study
I am interested in study, reflection, philosophy - but always as a dilettante. I also consider myself a dilettante as a painter.
struggle reality ideas
Like a researcher in his laboratory, I am the first spectator of the suggestions drawn from the materials. I unleash their expressive possibilities, even if I do not have a very clear idea of what I am going to do. As I go along with my work I formulate my thought, and from this struggle between what I want and the reality of the material - from this tension - is born an equilibrium.