Walls and Graffiti in Antoni Tàpies

Abstract

This article studies the graffiti of Antoni Tàpies, one of the most important twentieth-century Spanish artists. This is an aspect little considered in his art and, nevertheless, crucial to understand his body of work. This perspective allows us to highlight the artist’s interest to bridge the separation between art and life. This way, he can be recontextualized beyond the informalist current in which he has been generally classified and be brought closer to the international movements of action art. To this end, the appearance of the wall in his work will be examined, in order to see the emergence of graffiti. In a second place, two stages will be differentiated to see the relationship between Tàpies’ graffiti development and the transformations that took place in the field of graffiti at an international level. In this way, the article aims to expand the interpretative framework of Tàpies’ work, which thus acquires a greater coherence and gets opened to new meanings.