Fundació Antoni Tàpies

About this place

The Fundació Antoni Tàpies occupies the former editorial house of Montaner i Simon, one of the finest Catalan Modernisme buildings in the Eixample — designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner (architect of the Palau de la Música Catalana and the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau) in 1879. The conversion to a museum and foundation dedicated to the painter Antoni Tàpies was completed in 1990 by Roser Amadó and Lluís Domènech Girbau. The building's exterior is immediately identifiable from the street: above the brick facade with its characteristic Modernisme ironwork and exposed brick rises a tangle of metal tubes, wire, and a chair — Tàpies's sculpture Núvol i Cadira (Cloud and Chair), commissioned for the building's roof in 1990. The sculpture announces the building's purpose and establishes the relationship between the historic architecture and the contemporary art programme with characteristic directness. Inside, the rehabilitation is measured and respectful. The original industrial spaces — the building was a working publishing house, with large open floors for typesetting and printing — are adapted for display use with a minimum of intervention. The steel structure is left visible, the brick walls are unfinished, and the series of large galleries allows the exhibition of Tàpies's large-scale paintings and sculptures without compression. Tàpies (1923–2012) was the most significant Spanish painter of the postwar period outside of the historical generation of Miró and Dalí. His work drew on matter painting, Zen aesthetics, and Catalan political culture to produce a body of work that was simultaneously materially dense and conceptually open. The foundation provides the most complete permanent collection of his work anywhere.