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Lot Essay
In this canvas, Tàpies presents an almost monochrome panel of flat red colour that in its emptiness and intensity presents the colour as the subject of the painting. For Tàpies, red is the colour of life, of blood and the national colour of his native Catalonia. In Matter on Red Background Tàpies presents this seminal colour as a reality in its own right and reinforces the importance of its mystic significance by marking it with two partial crosses at each side of the canvas.
For Tàpies, the cross is an ancient sign that represents both the intersection of two opposing forces and one that establishes a union between those two forces. The making of this mark, a feature common to many of his works represents for him a Zen-like interaction that asserts the artist's presence and relationship to the work. "When I paint a sign, an X, a cross or a spiral", Tàpies has commented, "I experience a certain satisfaction. I see that the picture receives a real force with this sign." (quoted in Antoni Tàpies: Recent Works, Pace Gallery, 1993, p. 7).
In the centre of each of these two painted sand crosses Tàpies has clawed through the material with his fingers to reveal the red surface of the canvas behind it. In this way his actions physically mirror the mystic action of looking beyond artificial colour to the real "interior" colour of life. In addition, by interacting physically with the canvas at the very points of intersection within each cross, Tàpies shows us that the artistic act is itself a metaphor for this mystic journey.
For Tàpies, the cross is an ancient sign that represents both the intersection of two opposing forces and one that establishes a union between those two forces. The making of this mark, a feature common to many of his works represents for him a Zen-like interaction that asserts the artist's presence and relationship to the work. "When I paint a sign, an X, a cross or a spiral", Tàpies has commented, "I experience a certain satisfaction. I see that the picture receives a real force with this sign." (quoted in Antoni Tàpies: Recent Works, Pace Gallery, 1993, p. 7).
In the centre of each of these two painted sand crosses Tàpies has clawed through the material with his fingers to reveal the red surface of the canvas behind it. In this way his actions physically mirror the mystic action of looking beyond artificial colour to the real "interior" colour of life. In addition, by interacting physically with the canvas at the very points of intersection within each cross, Tàpies shows us that the artistic act is itself a metaphor for this mystic journey.