The Pace Gallery is honored to present its eighth exhibition devoted to the work of Catalan painter Antoni Tàpies, arguably the greatest European painter of his generation. The exhibition includes work completed over the past five years, featuring paintings on wood and canvas (including some assemblage), as well as a selection of works on paper created with a combination of graphite, paint and ink. Antoni Tàpies: Recent Paintings and Works on Paper will be on view at 32 East 57th Street, New York City, from May 7 through June 12, 2010. The gallery will remain open to the public until 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 6th for GALLERY NIGHT ON 57TH STREET.

For six decades, Antoni Tàpies has refined a visual language inspired by a wide range of sources that coalesce into a complex fusion of materials, gestures, and symbols. His explorations of Surrealist imagery early in his career served as the foundation for an ongoing investigation of the nature of physical objects and their materiality. At 86, Tàpies’ work embodies his extensive personal experience and history, as well as that of his native Spain and specifically Catalonia. The surface textures of Tàpies’ paintings are built with layers of marble dust, soil from the Catalan countryside, spray paint, synthetic varnish, and other commonplace objects. Tàpies’ initials continually reappear in his compositions, grounding his abstractions in personal experience. As Tàpies’ use of tangible materials for making art emphasize physical transformation, spiritual transformation is evoked through signs and symbols drawn from Eastern and Western cultures. The visual language and syntax of marks which Tàpies has developed during his long career, informed by his breadth of knowledge and studies, can be seen in his recent works on view in this exhibition.

This past March, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, established in 1984 by the artist, reopened to the public after two years of architectural renovations. The first exhibition to be presented in the newly renovated galleries is Antoni Tàpies: The Places of Art, which includes a selection of works completed over the past twenty years, coincident with the foundation’s two-decade history. Antoni Tàpies: The Places of Art is currently on view through May 2, 2010. Additional information about the foundation and its exhibition program is available on their website at http://www.fundaciotapies.org.

In 2009, Dia Art Foundation initiated a series of institutional exchanges with The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid to present Tàpies’ work at Dia:Beacon. The resulting exhibition, Antoni Tàpies: The Resources of Rhetoric, on view from May 16 through October 19, 2009, contextualized the artist’s work in relation to Dia’s collection of American and German art of the Sixties and Seventies.

Three years earlier, in December 2006, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies presented the first leg of the travelling exhibition Los carteles de Tàpies y la esfera pública. The show subsequently travelled to museum venues in Spain, France, Germany and the Czech Republic.

Antoni Tàpies (b. 1923, Barcelona, Spain) first exhibited his work in 1950. Two years later he was invited to participate in the Carnegie Institute exhibition in Pittsburgh and has since been the subject of major solo exhibitions and retrospectives at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1962 and 1995); Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1973); Nationalgalerie, Berlin (1974); Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, which travelled to Chicago, San Antonio, Iowa, and Montreal (1977); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (1990); Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (1993); Spanish Pavilion, 45th Venice Biennale (1993); Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris (1994); Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover (1997); and Kunsthalle Krems, Austria (1998). In 1992, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, exhibited Antoni Tàpies in Print. The show subsequently traveled to Miami, Detroit, and Caracas through 1993. A retrospective of Tàpies’ work was organized by The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid in 2000, which travelled to Haus der Kunst in Munich. Recently, Tàpies Tierras debuted at the Reina Sofía (October 26, 2004 to November 1, 2005), and later travelled to Fundacion Caixa Galicia, A Coruña, Spain (April 29–June 19, 2005).

The recipient of numerous honors and prizes, Antoni Tàpies has been awarded the British Arts Council Prize at the International Graphics Exhibition (1974); the Ciutat de Barcelona Prize (1979); the Peace Prize by the United Nations Association in Spain (1984); and the Prix National de Peinture by the French Government (1985); and the Praemium Imperiale by the Artistic Association of Japan (1990). Tàpies participated in three Venice Biennale exhibitions (1952, 1954, 1958) prior to being selected to represent Spain at the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993, during which he was presented with the Biennale’s Award for Painting.

The artist’s work can be found in more than 90 public museum collections worldwide, including: Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona; Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), Barcelona; Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Guggenheim Bilbao; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands; Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Humlebæk, Denmark; Tate Gallery; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Musée des Beaux- Arts, Lyon; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montreal; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio; Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul de Vence; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran; Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo; IVAM Centro Julio González, Valencia, and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., among others.