• Post-War & Contemporary Art  D auction at Christies

    Sale 7873

    Post-War & Contemporary Art Day Auction

    London

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    15 October 2010

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    • Antoni Tàpies (b. 1923)
    Lot 295

    Antoni Tàpies (b. 1923)

    Broken Ground

    Price realised

    GBP 121,250

    Estimate

    GBP 120,000 - GBP 180,000

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    Add to Interests

    Antoni Tàpies (b. 1923)
    Broken Ground
    signed and dated 'Tapies 1963' (on the reverse)
    oil and sand on canvas
    38 5/8 x 51¼in. (98 x 130cm.)
    Executed in 1963

    Provenance

    Martha Jackson Gallery, New York.
    Galleria Toninelli, Rome.
    La Nuova Loggia Gallery, Bologna.
    Galleria Arte 92, Milan.

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    Literature and exhibited

    Literature

    A. Agustí, Tàpies, The Complete Works, 1961-1968, vol. II, Barcelona 1990, no. 1172 (illustrated, p. 156).
    B. Bonet, Tàpies, Barcelona 1964 (illustrated in colour, pp. 152-153).
    A. Tàpies, Mémoire. Autobiographie, Paris 1981 (illustrated, p. 427).
    A. Tàpies, Autobiografia, Venice 1982 (illustrated, unpaged).


    Lot Essay

    'The mystical consciousness - almost undefinable - seems fundamental for an artist. It is like a "suffering" of reality, a state of constant hyper-sensitivity to everything that surrounds us, good and bad, light and darkness. It is like a voyage to the center of the universe which furnishes the perspective necessary for placing all things of life in their real dimension'
    ('I am a Catalan' 1971, repr. in Stiles and Selz Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles 1996, p. 56).

    As with Broken Ground, the surfaces of many of Ties' paintings are like walls in that these strongly material paintings assert themselves as a borderline between two states of understanding both repelling and inviting contemplation. Essentially landscapes made from the psychic interaction between man and material, and, more spiritually, between man as dust and dust as dust, the slight ephemeral, transient but ultimately profoundly meaningful marks that Ties makes in these works, are, for him, scores in the infinite but also material space that is manifested in front of the viewer in the form of the work's more-or-less flat painterly surface. Reflecting the spirit of man energizing and mixing with the matter of the painting, Ties' intention is to penetrate this mystery of life as catalogued on a wall or a door's surface by interacting with this innate nature. In this way, penetrating and making impressions on the surface of a canvas is therefore, for him, analogous to a journey of exploration.

    Other information

    Special Notice


    Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.


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