Antoni Tàpies
Amer

Artists' Page


1923 Antoni Tàpies was born in Barcelona on 13 December, the son of the lawyer Josep Tàpies i Mestres and Maria Puig i Guerra, who came from a family of booksellers and Catalan nationalist politicians, deeply involved in public life at the time. He was brought up in an open, tolerant cultural atmosphere, which owed much to his father's friendship with important public figures. 1926-1932
Primary schools in Barcelona (Colegio de las Monjas de Loreto, Escuela Alemana and Escuelas Pías).

1926-1932
Primary schools in Barcelona (Colegio de las monjas de Loreto, Escuela Alemana and Escuelas Pías).

1934
He began secondary school.

First contact with contemporary art through a number of Catalan publications, especially the special Christmas number of the magazine "D'Ací i d'Allà", coordinated by Josep Lluís Sert and Joan Prats, with texts by Zervos, Foix and Gasch, among others, and reproductions of works by Picasso, Braque, Gris, Léger, Mondrian, Brancusi, Kandinsky, Duchamp, Arp and Miró.

1936-1939
During the Spanish Civil War he continued his studies at the Liceo Práctico in Barcelona, and for a few months he worked at the Generalitat de Catalunya, where his father was a legal advisor. He taught himself drawing and painting. The end of the war -with the defeat of the legitimate democratic government of the Second Republic and the beginning of General Franco's dictatorship- was to leave a deep mark on many aspects of his life and artistic career.


With a self taught formation, his firsts works, gave step to a serial of draws with a expresionist character, and sujects with short brush strokes, in his early forties and influenced by Paul Klee and Max Ernst, he worked in surrealist paintings where fantastic landscapes appear. In 1948 he founded the group called " Dau al Set ", one of the first and most relevant initiatives of the Spanish art during the after war period. In 1949 Eugeni d'Ors presented his works for the firs time, in Madrid in the Eleven's Saloon, and in 1950, he makes his first exhibition in the Galeries Layetanas in Barcelona. This same year, thanks to a grant of the French Government, he went to live in Paris.