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Lot Essay
Executed in 1963 and exhibited in Antoni Tàpies's landmark retrospective at the Galerie Beyler in 1975, Relleu blanc amb dos forats presents the artist's meditations on the legacy of his country. Alabaster white, the painting is richly textured, the artist having inscribed deep grooves into the surface with his improvised tools. The painting appears like a wall, flat yet bearing the traces of some illusory time: smudges and prominent gouges impressed upon its surface. Along the lower portion of the painting, a broken trail of red lines traverses the canvas, from left to right. Like a finger dipped in red, dragged across the surface, the marks suggest the traces of a living being as well as a sanguine reminder of human mortality. For Tàpies, these gestures represent the imperfect course of history, the violent forces of nature, the emblems of love and the ravages of war to which the wall pays testimony. As Roland Penrose once described, 'the wall presents a surface open to attack in a great variety of ways initials, numbers, scars, stains, obscenities will accumulate with age like wrinkles on a face or scars. The wall can be as informative as an encyclopedia, but Tàpies has not been limited by a desire to copy its information; he has penetrated its mysteries with the same insistence as he has questioned even the basic composition of the materials with which it is built, in order to gain some understanding of the elusive nature of its reality' (R. Penrose, Tàpies, London 1978, p. 60).
Early on in his career, Tàpies had been largely preoccupied with Surreal-inspired somnambulistic figures and mystical objects. From the mid 1950s onwards however, the artist dramatically shifted his approach in favour of a focus on materials. Through his heavily encrusted surfaces, the artist sought to create segments of reality, his marble powder and glue compounds recalling the elemental quality of the earth. For Tàpies 'a concentration on substances was a means to transform material presence into spiritual lucidity' (A. Franzke, Tàpies: The Complete Works, Volume II: 1961-1968, Barcelona 1990, p. 10), reflecting his own formation in eastern philosophy and in particular Zen Buddhism. In Relleu blanc amb dos forats created at the height of the 1960s, a decade dominated by Conceptual Art movements, Tàpies stood against prevailing trends, keeping faith with his sensual, material approach. Unlike the earlier generation of French artists such as Jean Fautrier and Jean Dubuffet, he went further, renouncing easel painting altogether and waving its formal dictates. In doing so, he created a painting without depth or illusion appearing so flat that it became the equivalent of a wall.
For the artist, the wall became a major preoccupation. Influenced partly by Gaudí's architecture in his native Barcelona, the wall also bore a special relevance to the artist as a carrier of memory. As he once explained in his essay 'Communication concerning the Wall': 'there are memories that come from my adolescence and early youth, shut up by the walls between which I lived throughout the years of war. The dramatic suffering of the adults and all the cruel fantasies of those of my own age who were abandoned to their own impulses seemed to inscribe themselves on the walls around me. The walls of the city which family tradition made me consider so much my own, were witnesses of the martyrdoms and inhuman sufferings inflicted on our people' (A. Tàpies quoted in R. Penrose, Tàpies, London 1978, p. 59).
Early on in his career, Tàpies had been largely preoccupied with Surreal-inspired somnambulistic figures and mystical objects. From the mid 1950s onwards however, the artist dramatically shifted his approach in favour of a focus on materials. Through his heavily encrusted surfaces, the artist sought to create segments of reality, his marble powder and glue compounds recalling the elemental quality of the earth. For Tàpies 'a concentration on substances was a means to transform material presence into spiritual lucidity' (A. Franzke, Tàpies: The Complete Works, Volume II: 1961-1968, Barcelona 1990, p. 10), reflecting his own formation in eastern philosophy and in particular Zen Buddhism. In Relleu blanc amb dos forats created at the height of the 1960s, a decade dominated by Conceptual Art movements, Tàpies stood against prevailing trends, keeping faith with his sensual, material approach. Unlike the earlier generation of French artists such as Jean Fautrier and Jean Dubuffet, he went further, renouncing easel painting altogether and waving its formal dictates. In doing so, he created a painting without depth or illusion appearing so flat that it became the equivalent of a wall.
For the artist, the wall became a major preoccupation. Influenced partly by Gaudí's architecture in his native Barcelona, the wall also bore a special relevance to the artist as a carrier of memory. As he once explained in his essay 'Communication concerning the Wall': 'there are memories that come from my adolescence and early youth, shut up by the walls between which I lived throughout the years of war. The dramatic suffering of the adults and all the cruel fantasies of those of my own age who were abandoned to their own impulses seemed to inscribe themselves on the walls around me. The walls of the city which family tradition made me consider so much my own, were witnesses of the martyrdoms and inhuman sufferings inflicted on our people' (A. Tàpies quoted in R. Penrose, Tàpies, London 1978, p. 59).