15 quotes
For in order to be born again, you must die.
..[the walls in the city] witnessed the martyrdom and the inhumane repression inflicted on our people.
In actual fact, contemplation is not a form of inactivity but an exercise.
The tattoo can only exist as part of the skin, as a drawing always is an incision in the material and therefore cannot be parted from it.
Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 – 2003 (2004)
I never view aesthetic ideas as having an existence purely of their own but as a function they have in connection with political or moral values.
Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 – 2003 (2004)
The material presence of the work only serves as a conveyer launching an invitation to the observer to take part of the comprehensive game of the thousand and one emotions and visions.
Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 – 2003 (2004)
My illusion is to have something to transmit. If I can't change the world, at least I want to change the way people look at it.
The highest wisdom incarnated in the poorest body. And even in straw mixed with manure: the final substances in which, by a rare miracle, the origin and strength of life emerge anew. The circle closes.
I often told the fanatics of realism that there is no such thing as realism in art: it only exists in the mind of the observer. Art is a symbol, a thing conjuring up reality in our mental image. That is why I don't see any contradiction between abstract and figurative art either.
Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 – 2003 (2004)
An image means nothing. It is just a door, leading to the next door. It will never happens that we will find the truth we are looking for just in an image; it will happen behind the last door that the spectator discover the truth, because of his own efforts.
Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 – 2003 (2004)
What I did [his artistic work in the 1940's] also served as a way to spit in the face of the well-meaning bourgeoisie...
The artist may rightly venture the opinion that he does not convey ideas, does not preach, nor that he intents to convert people by using mass communication techniques.. .Better than handing out all kinds of wise advice, he could show life itself; he could awake forces lying dormant in everybody, he could launch an invitation to create direct and personal experiences.
Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 – 2003 (2004)
In our world, in which religious images are losing their meaning, in which our customs are getting more and more secular, we are losing our sense of the eternal. I think it’s a loss that has done a great deal of damage to modern art. Painting is a return to origins.
In an interview on the BBC arts program 'Omnibus (1990)
Reminding people what in reality it is all about, giving them a theme on which to ponder, creating a shock within them, pulling them out of the delusion of non authenticity, enabling them to become aware of their true possibilities. [quote from 1976]
Obviously, the intention was not to go back to images traditionally valued as worthy or holy images and shapes, but exactly the opposite; its main purpose had to be, to realise as sacred art anything which so far had been regarded as of little value and pitiful. [quote from 1988]