Antoni T�pies at Dia

I’m still in the Hudson River Valley after the opening at John Davis Gallery yesterday. Thanks Martin Bromirski, Maureen Burke, Tracy Helgeson, Chris Quirk, Amy Madden, Beth Gilfilen, and everyone else for making the trip. Today I’m headed to Dia:Beacon to see the Antoni T�pies exhibition.

T�pies
was born in Barcelona, Spain, in 1923 into a family of booksellers and
Catalan nationalist politicians, and during protracted periods of
illness in his adolescence, he developed a serious interest in
literature and drawing. In 1944, after abandoning law studies at
Barcelona University, he began to work as an artist. T�pies first
exhibited his work in the late 1940s in Barcelona and had his first solo
exhibition in 1950 at Galeries Laietanes, Barcelona. In 1953 he had his
first NYC solo show at Martha Jackson Gallery. He first traveled
abroad, to Paris, in 1951, where he met Picasso, and in 1953 he visited
New York, where he met Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Robert
Motherwell, and Hans Hofmann. In 1984, he established the Fundacio Antoni T�pies in Barcelona.

 Antoni T�pies, Palla i fusta, 1969, (Straw and Wood), assemblage on canvas, 150 x 116 cm

Comprising approximately twenty major large-scale works from the 1950s and 1960s, the show explores how T�pies developed the language and signature iconography�informed by the political upheavals of his native Spain�that shaped his practice throughout his career. During the same period, he began to use unconventional materials and media, mixing traditional paints with such purposefully commonplace materials as sand, ash, marble powder, paper, cloth, and string. Typically called �matter paintings,� these pieces incorporate gestural form and thickly worked, scraped, torn, and incised surfaces. Together, the works shed light on T�pies�s commitment to contemporary political and social issues, especially in relation to his Catalan heritage.

The exhibition was curated by T�pies scholar Manuel Borja-Villel, director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Re�na Sof�a in Madrid (Museo Re�na Sof�a) and former director of the Fundacio Antoni T�pies in Barcelona. It initiates a series of institutional exchanges between Dia and the Museo Reina Sof�a, Spain�s national museum of modern and contemporary art.

“Antoni T�pies: The Resources of Rhetoric,” curated by Manuel Borja-Villel. Dia: Beacon, Beacon, NY. Through October 19.