Tàpies Museum explores artist's 1950 exhibitions in new show

The Tàpies Museum has opened a new exhibition, 'The Perpetual Movement of the Wall', exploring what Antoni Tàpies' exhibitions were like in the 1950s.

The show focuses on four key exhibitions: Galeries Laietanes (1950 and 1954), Galerie Stadler in Paris (1956), and Sala Gaspar in Barcelona (1960). 

Not only are the artworks recreated, but also how they were displayed and how critics and the public responded.

Museum director and co-curator Imma Prieto says the exhibition raises "questions that can only be asked from the present."

Visitors are invited to consider how people in the 1950s first experienced these works, compared to today, when we are used to seeing them on white museum walls. "The experience is not the same," Prieto says.

Co-curator Pablo Allepuz says the exhibition also shows how Tàpies reinvented himself with almost every show. "In 1950, his work reflected Surrealism and influences like Paul Klee and Joan Miró. By 1954, his style shifted to cooler abstraction, inspired by Mondrian, the Bauhaus, and Le Corbusier."

Reconstructing these shows required careful research. No photos exist of the 1950 Galeries Laietanes exhibition, so curators used images from a 1949 Joan Miró show in the same space as a reference. 

Black-and-white photos from the 1960 Sala Gaspar exhibition helped curators recreate details such as floor-to-ceiling curtains.

The exhibition also reflects on the meaning of the 'wall' in Tàpies' work. Prieto describes it as the walls of a sanatorium, the streets of Barcelona still marked by bullet holes, and a surface that carries public expression.

Texts from critics such as Alexandre Cirici, Joan-Josep Tharrats, and Michel Tapié accompany the exhibition. 

The proposal includes public and educational programs, such as the international symposium 'The Wall and the City. Visual Devices of Modernity'.

Works on display come from MACBA, the Carmen Thyssen Museum of Barcelona, Banco Santander, the Juan March Foundation, and other collections.

The exhibition runs through September 6 at the Tàpies Museum in Barcelona.