Pace Prints is pleased to present Antoni Tàpies, Prints, on view at its 32 East 57th Street gallery, from February 19—March 21, 2015. The exhibition will run concurrent with Antoni Tàpies: 1923-2013 at Pace Gallery's 57th Street location, the artist’s first exhibition in New York since his death in 2012.
The prints included in the exhibition exemplify the artist’s expressive gesture and interest in materiality, a technique that propelled him to the forefront of the postwar European avant-garde.
Printmaking had a profound effect on the work of Tàpies, and informed much of his work in other media. In these prints, like in his paintings, themes of flatness, language, national identity, death and the human body are explored with both reverence and innovative spirit.
In Silouta (1997), Tàpies’s rust and earth-inspired palette and sweeping brushstrokes create friction between the aquatint and etching mediums and the pintura matèrica style. In the large-scale Crani i cadira (1995), gritty carborundum is used to challenge inherent flatness of the printmaking medium, creating an intensely rich and tactile surface. Tàpies’ work embodies his extensive personal experience and history, as well as that of his native Spain and specifically Catalonia. As Tàpies’ use of tangible materials for making art emphasize physical transformation, spiritual transformation is evoked through signs and symbols drawn from Eastern and Western cultures. Tàpies has participated in three Venice Biennale exhibitions (1952, 1954, 1958) prior to being selected to represent Spain at the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993, during which he was presented with the Biennale’s Award for Painting.