The first and only collector of the pioneering exhibition that Antoni Tàpies held at the Galeries Laietanes in 1950 was Joan Antoni Samaranch, a family friend, as Tàpies himself recalled in one of his writings. It was difficult for Tàpies to put on that exhibition. Despite Josep Gudiol's insistence, his friend Joan Brossa advised him against showing his works in public. But Tàpies decided to do it before embarking on his first trip to Paris, funded by the Círculo Mallol. No photographs of the installation survive, but in those years the gallery was practically dark to highlight the exhibited works. In Tàpies' case, accounts described the atmosphere in the afternoon as "terrifying," explains Pablo Allepuz, curator of the Museu Tàpies collection and co-curator, with the director, Imma Prieto, of the institution's new exhibition. The perpetual motion of the wall"This coincidence between the space, the exhibition context, and the content of Tàpies's painting is an important aspect for understanding his critical reception—that is, everything that journalists and critics said about his work—and also for considering that perhaps even what Tàpies painted then and from then on was already present."

For Antoni Tàpies, art was a path to knowledge and transformation. "I think a work of art should leave the viewer perplexed, make them reflect on the meaning of life," he stated. As for the audience, Tàpies also considered children, and in 1967 he published an article in the magazine Strong Horse titled The game of knowing how to lookWith this approach, he spurred them on to go further: starting with an everyday object, specifically a chair, he proposed that they consider the chair's entire life, from the tree where the wood came from to the carpenter who made it. And also its destruction, how an old chair could be used to fuel a bonfire. "Look, look closely! And let yourself be fully carried away by everything that what our gaze offers resonates within you, like someone going to a concert in a new dress with an open heart, eager to listen," Tàpies told them.

To mark the centenary of Antoni Tàpies last year, the Museu Tàpies commissioned director Albert Serra to create a piece that would generate new narratives and reflections on the painter's work. The result is Faith without works is dead52 minutes of magnetic and deconstructed images, eight segments ranging from the study of a body or a scene framed in a sensual, almost violent way, to total visual abstraction, sometimes projecting a work by Tàpies and giving great prominence to the sound mosaic of loops The film features synthesizers by Marc Verdaguer, Serra's regular musician. It was screened this Thursday at the Museu Tàpies as part of the Loop Festival, a closing of the circle that culminated in a subsequent discussion between the filmmaker and journalist Joan Burdeus.

The mystery of beauty (art) and the mystery of life (religion) are not so far apart. Or perhaps they are one and the same? What is the meaning of beauty and what is the meaning of life? This is something some humans ask themselves (we ask ourselves), while others simply dedicate themselves (we dedicate ourselves) to enjoying the beauties of life. Carpe we sayAnd there are still those who reject the question: they find it anti-modern. Religion? "From chewing on it so much, perhaps we no longer feel it, but creation "It's a religious word. If it has had unspeakable importance in the history of thought and art, it's because its root appears in the first verb of the Latin version of the Bible." Raül Garrigasait writes: in the essay Rock and Air: Art and Religion by Llull at Tàpies (Fragmenta), so deservedly praised.

"The evolution of contemporary art goes one way and that of my mind goes another, and I believe that the interest of this proposal lies in that collision," he said on Thursday. Albert Serra before presenting at the Filmoteca Faith without works is dead, a piece commissioned by the Museu Tàpies to commemorate the painter's centenary celebrated last year. tribute perhaps it would be excessive: for 53 minutes divided into eight parts with titles like Friend, Oracle either First fall, Serra films scenes without narrative or hardly any action, sometimes over the projection of a work by Tàpies and always accompanied by a sound envelope of layers of synthesizer and feedback by his regular musician, Marc Verdaguer. Occasionally, subtitles appear that have no relation to what is shown on the screen: it could be an evocative "Who dreams of whom?", a disconcerting "Amor Visca" or a cryptic "honey, oriole, sparrow, warbler". Among the actors who appear in the film – it cannot be said that they act – is Lluís Serrat, Serra's faithful squire since the times ofHonor of chivalry. The images have a magnetic and violent aftertaste, especially when the camera moves abruptly as if someone had hit it.

Raül Garrigasait (Solsona, 1979) has dedicated The rock and the air (Fragmenta, 2025), his latest essay, explores art and religion, two concepts that have shaped civilization for millennia. Through seven totemic yet radical figures.Ramon Llull, Ausiàs March, Isabel de Villena, Joan Maragall, Josep Carner, Frederic Mompou and Antoni Tàpies—, Garrigasait traces a path that connects past and present: in his hands, rereading cultural heritage ends up being an optimal way to give it continuity.

The NO-DO, the weekly Francoist news programme that was shown in cinemas, was on the right track. In November 1949, it showed a report on art following the II Salón de Octubre organised by the Galerías Layetanas in Barcelona. There were works by Antoni Tàpies, Modesto Cuixart and Àngel Ferrant, among other artists from the Dau al Set group. The position of the news programme was unequivocal: it associated this avant-garde art with "a fairground spectacle, with social danger and criminality, according to an exercise in psychopathologisation that recovers the [Nazi] theories of degenerate art", as explained by Pablo Allepuz, curator of the exhibition. Antoni Tàpies. The Imagination of the World together with Imma Prieto, the director of the Museu Tàpies.