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Gran pintura con lineas de puntos sand, oil and charcoal on canvas 763/4 x 925/8in. (195 x 260cm.) Executed in 1958 PROVENANCE Martha Jackson Gallery, New York. Anderson Gallery, Buffalo, New York. LITERATURE M. Tapi‚, Antonio T…pies, Barcelona, 1959, pl. 5 (illustrated). G. Gatt, Antoni T…pies, Bologna, 1967, pl. 75 (illustrated). M. Tapi‚, T…pies, Milan, 1969, pl. 93 (illustrated). P. Gimferrer, T…pies i l'esperit catal…, Barcelona, 1974, pp. 124-125, p. 147 (illustrated). A. T…pies, M‚moire, Paris, 1981, p. 352 (illustrated). A. Agust¡, T…pies, The Complete Works, 1943-1960, vol. I, New York, 1989, no. 662 (illustrated in colour, p. 339). EXHIBITION Venice, XXIX Biennale di Venezia, June-October, 1958, no. 88. IVAM 82................. Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sof¡a, T…pies, March-May 2000, no. 33 (illustrated in colour, p.159). Munich, Haus der Kunst, Anton¡ T…pies, May-August 2000, no. 35. San Francisco Museum of Art..................... NOTES Tapies' paintings do not represent the world of external appearances. From his earliest dream paintings to his textural paintings and sculptures of the 1980s and 1990s, his work has always reflected a hidden reality that Tapies hopes will both stimulate and be recognised by the unconscious mind and inner life of the viewer. From the early 1950s onwards, Tapies has taken his native Catalonia as the basis of this pictorial world, using earth, glue, marble dust and a variety of other materials to depict a scarred world of closed doors and shuttered windows. Having grown up in Barcelona where as a teenager he had witnessed the stubborn resistance but eventual capitulation of the Republican government to the oppressive force of Franco's army, the streets of his native city came to represent for him the history of the suffering of his people. "In the city which through habit and family tradition, was so much my own, " Tapies recalled, "the walls were witnesses to all the torments and the reactionary inhumanity that our people were forced to endure. " (cited in Conversations with Antoni Tapies, Barbara Catoir, Munich 1991, p. 34) Gran Pintura con lineas de puntos ("Large Painting with dotted lines") is a large and important example of the early "Wall" paintings that Tapies began in the early 1950s. In these works, Tapies has abandoned traditional painting in order to create a surface that records, in a variety of ways, the action of elements such as the wind and the rain as well as the artist's intuitive and often spontaneous responses to the material itself. "Like a researcher in his laboratory," Tapies has explained, "I am the first spectator of the suggestions drawn from the materials. I unleash their expressive possibilities, even if I do not have a very clear idea of what I am going to do. As I go along with my work I formulate my thought, and from this struggle between what I want and the reality of the material - from this tension - is born an equilibrium. ("I am a Catalan" 1971 repr. in Stiles and Selz Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art. University of California Press 1996.p.55.) In Gran Pintura con lineas de puntos Tapies presents an exquisite layered surface of sand that has been repeatedly punctured to create an enchanting series of dotted lines that generate a rippled effect throughout the work. Tapies further expresses the inherent nature of the material by dividing this large painting into three sections, allowing the incised lines of division to crumble away in parts so that through his assisted erosions the edge of the sand creates its own shape and dimension. In addition, in order to highlight the colour and texture of the material Tapies has busily applied contrasting white paint around the edges of this seemingly autonomously created surface. In this way Tapies has created a work that through his interaction expresses only itself and the inherent nature of what it is made. Tapies' actions and their significance have merged with the inherent nature of the work so that each becomes a poetic expression of the other.