Spaightwood Galleries

The winner of the 1958 Carnegie Prize, Tàpies has had major shows at The Museum of Modern Art (NY), The Guggenheim Museum (1962, 1995), The Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), the Musée d’Art Moderne (Paris), the new Jeu de Pomme (1994, Paris; 304-page catalog published Paris: Reunion des Musees Nationaux, 1994), the Hayward Gallery (London), the Louisiana Museum (Copenhagen), the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo), the Nationalgalerie (Berlin), and many others. Sir Roland Penrose’s Tàpies concludes by noting that "the ultimate purpose . . . [of Tàpies’ art] is transcendental" and that his "deepest hope is of the transformation of mankind" through his art, which unveils "a cosmogony in which nothing whatsoever is mean." As Tàpies has written himself, he seeks "to remind man of what in reality he is, to give him a theme for reflection, to shock him in order to rescue him from the madness of inauthenticity and to lead him to self-discovery." In a New York Times review of Tàpies’ 1995 retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC, Alan Riding suggests that Tàpies works show an attempt to "reach ultimate reality through introspection . . . to achieve ‘the ultimate mysterious unity’ that links the entire universe."

Acclaimed by Robert Motherwell as the greatest living European artist, Tàpies has made printmaking one of his central activities and his prints have always been recognized as a major part of his oeuvre; they were celebrated in a retrospective organized by The Museum of Modern Art in 1991 that circulated to a number of museums in the US, Central and South America from 1991 to 1993. In connection with their show, the Museum of Modern Art published Tàpies in Print (a retrospective of his prints and illustrated books, showing about 100 works), probably the best introduction to his graphic works. In addition to our featured work, Llibertat/Liberty, a large, beautiful original color lithograph at a very special price, Spaightwood Galleries has over 50 works (selected from the more than 175 works in our inventory, more of which will be appearing soon on our web site) on display.

The bibliography on Tàpies is enormous and growing: six volumes of the catalogue raisonné of his paintings, three of his prints (Galfetti, in progress), and volumes on his posters and sculptures have been published; in addition to many studies of his works by critics, there are also many volumes published by various museums on the occasion of retrospectives of his works, including (in English) Tàpies in Print (published for a survey of Tàpies' print oeuvre by the Museum of Modern Art) and one by the Guggenheim Museum (on his paintings).

Llibertat / Liberty. Original color lithograph, 1988. Edition: 300 signed and numbered impressions plus 30 artists proofs printed by Galerie Lelong, Paris, for the 1988 Olympic Print Portfolio. The work was never published because the Olympic Portfolio publisher went bankrupt. We have been told by one of the principal creditors that while the prints were in storage awaiting the outcome of the bankruptcy proceedings, many of the prints were ruined by water damage. All of our impressions, however, are in excellent condition. Image size: 892x590mm. Price: $4650.

Affiche avant lettre 1990. Original color lithograph, 1990. 100 signed and numbered impressions (of which ours is one) plus an unsigned poster edition with a printed text. Image size: 775x613mm. Price: $4600

Blanc Central (Galfetti 847). Original color etching with carborundum, 1982. 99 signed and numbered impressions on handmade Guarro paper published by Ediciones Poligrafa. Image size: 490x420mm. Price: $8150.

500 anys del libre catala (Galfetti 401). Original color lithograph, 1974. 90 signed & numbered impressions. Catalonia was an independent country until the late 15th century when it was incorporated into Spain. The title, then, would be quite ironic to a Catalonian nationalist like Tapies. Image size: 760x560mm. Price: $4650.

Lunettes (Galfetti 1086). Original color lithograph, 1986. 75 signed and numbered impressions published by Lelong Editeur of which this is one. Image size: 320x660cm. Price: $3900.