Lot Essay
Executed in 1950, this untitled landscape belongs to an early series of paintings by Tàpies that have been categorized by the critic Alexandre Cirici as representing the artist's 'Magic Period'. Tàpies' paintings were the first of the artist's works to gain him an international reputation as one of Spain's most promising contemporary artists and lay much of the groundwork for the later more textural and abstract work for which he is now best known.
In 1948, along with his friend, the poet and writer Joan Brossa, Tàpies came under the influence of the Surrealists and their evocation of the fantastic and magical imagery of dreams. Influenced directly by artists such as Paul Klee, Joan Miró and Max Ernst, Tàpies began to explore the painterly possibilities of expressing cosmic and dreamlike landscapes in a manner of finely crafted and delicate paintings for which Brossa would often provide mysterious and poetic titles. These works achieved the widest acclaim in the United States where amongst many others, they won Tàpies the lasting admiration of his fellow countryman, Salvador Dalí.
The present work is one of the more accomplished of Tàpies' 'Magic' paintings, blending together a wide range of motifs and mythical creatures into a delicate nocturnal landscape. Scratched finely into the surface of the canvas, Tàpies depicts a textured desert landscape dominated by a huge moon and a skeletal illustration of a wall clock. The clock conveys a sense of the artificiality of counting time that is reinforced by the seeming simultaneity of the rest of the visual imagery that seemingly floats in shimmering colour on the surface of the picture.
In 1948, along with his friend, the poet and writer Joan Brossa, Tàpies came under the influence of the Surrealists and their evocation of the fantastic and magical imagery of dreams. Influenced directly by artists such as Paul Klee, Joan Miró and Max Ernst, Tàpies began to explore the painterly possibilities of expressing cosmic and dreamlike landscapes in a manner of finely crafted and delicate paintings for which Brossa would often provide mysterious and poetic titles. These works achieved the widest acclaim in the United States where amongst many others, they won Tàpies the lasting admiration of his fellow countryman, Salvador Dalí.
The present work is one of the more accomplished of Tàpies' 'Magic' paintings, blending together a wide range of motifs and mythical creatures into a delicate nocturnal landscape. Scratched finely into the surface of the canvas, Tàpies depicts a textured desert landscape dominated by a huge moon and a skeletal illustration of a wall clock. The clock conveys a sense of the artificiality of counting time that is reinforced by the seeming simultaneity of the rest of the visual imagery that seemingly floats in shimmering colour on the surface of the picture.