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Fundació Antoni Tàpies
A Marquess who painted with mud and rags
The Fundació Tàpies occupies one of the more striking business buildings around the Passeig de Gràcia: the Editorial Montaner i Simón (1880–5) built by Domènech i Montaner for his publisher brother.
It was the first time that Domènech had a chance to put his proto-Modernista theories into practice in the good Catalan brick and iron he loved, arranged in patterns reminiscent of the Moorish-influenced mudéjar work of medieval Spain.
Antoni Tàpies, whose poetic smudges and scribbles made him a world-famous artist, took over the building for his foundation and topped it all with his Núvol i Cadira (Cloud and Chair) that hovers over the building like a giant bird net. The pigeons have learned to avoid it.
Born to a bourgeois family in Barcelona, Antoni Tàpies (in 1923—2012) was a sickly child who spent days in bed, sketching. His father compelled him to study law (he survived school better than his good friend Joan Miró), but he returned seriously to his first love, art, during the Second World War.
Image by Morgaine