Lot Essay
Dating from 1960, Horizontals on Black is an extraordinarily impressive example of Tàpies' early matter paintings. The entire canvas is framed by a solid texture consisting of sand and paint. This same texture divides the individual areas into rectangles of a smoother paint film appearing as four paintings within a painting. There are several incisions and symbols carved into the frameworks giving tension and dimension to the picture. The work bears no illusion of depth other than the actual depth of the gougings and incisions. The artist's insistence on the identity of his material and on the totality of image creates a space into which we do not go but rather we feel the painting advances towards us.
The viewer is confronted with what appears to be a large black door. The subject of the door is a reoccurring element in Tàpies' work. As early as 1956, the artist had transformed the corrugated rectangle of a well-worn, rusted, metal shop-window cover into a picture surface by inscribing on it an "X". This kind of door serves as a precedent for many later images that are at once doors, windows, and walls.
This preoccupation with doors is inherent to Tàpies' work and thinking. Tàpies wrote: "A picture is nothing, it is a door that leads to another door... The truth we seek will never be found in a picture; it will only appear behind the last door that the viewer succeeds in opening by his own efforts." (in: Tàpies, Guggenheim Museum, New York 1995, p. 36). This mystical statement, with its many precedents in Eastern ideology, lends a spiritual dimension to Tàpies' oeuvre.
The viewer is confronted with what appears to be a large black door. The subject of the door is a reoccurring element in Tàpies' work. As early as 1956, the artist had transformed the corrugated rectangle of a well-worn, rusted, metal shop-window cover into a picture surface by inscribing on it an "X". This kind of door serves as a precedent for many later images that are at once doors, windows, and walls.
This preoccupation with doors is inherent to Tàpies' work and thinking. Tàpies wrote: "A picture is nothing, it is a door that leads to another door... The truth we seek will never be found in a picture; it will only appear behind the last door that the viewer succeeds in opening by his own efforts." (in: Tàpies, Guggenheim Museum, New York 1995, p. 36). This mystical statement, with its many precedents in Eastern ideology, lends a spiritual dimension to Tàpies' oeuvre.