Antoni Tapies (Spain) | Black on White No. 2, 1959 | Lithography, 75x105 (95x125)

Signed with pencil 'Prova d'artista' (front lower left), 'tapies' (front lower right).

The artwork is framed with museum glass ArtGlass70.

BLACK ON WHITE, NO. 2 (ONE OF THE "BLACK LITHOGRAPHS" EXECUTED IN 1959)

This rare lithograph is one of Tàpies’ earliest untitled lithographs, referred to as the “Black Lithographs,” executed in 1959 when he began experimenting with printmaking. In the late 1950s, Miquel and Joan Gaspar, cousins who ran the Sala Gaspar family gallery in Barcelona where Tàpies exhibited, invited the artist to have his first lithographs published by their firm. In the MoMA catalogue, Deborah Wye describes Tàpies’ experimental approach to the medium: “In 1959, he devised unusual methods to achieve surface patterning. He sprinkled sawdust and sprayed ink from mosquito sprayers or squeezed it through cracks in broken glass.”

See the exhibition catalogue Antoni Tàpies in Print, organized by Deborah Wye, Curator, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, May 6 – August 9, 1992, pp. 22–23.

One of the most prominent Spanish artists of the 20th century, Antoni Tàpies (1923-2012), combined various concepts and materials in his extensive artistic practice. His work was influenced by early modernists such as Paul Klee, Joan Miró, and Art Informel artists like Jean Dubuffet. In all his paintings, prints, sculptures, and works on paper, Tàpies created a visual language full of thick, meaningless gestures, symbols, and cosmological scripts. The materials he used ranged from rubbish and earth to dust and stone, creating a sense of solidity and physicality throughout his oeuvre.

A. Tàpies participated in the Venice Biennale four times and exhibited in Paris, London, Barcelona, Brussels, Berlin, Tokyo, Zurich, and New York. His works have been sold at auctions for seven-figure sums (the most expensive piece was sold at a Christie's auction on July 1, 2014, for €2,060,484) and are included in the collections of the Pompidou Centre, Moderna Museet, Kunstmuseum Basel, Beyeler Foundation, Museum of Modern Art, and Tate.