BARCELONA.- Fifty Antoni Tàpies’ paintings and drawings are being exhibited at the Palau Fabre Foundation (Fundación Palau Fabre) from today on in the “Gaze at the Hand” (“Mira la mano...”) exhibition, which shows the vitality of the last ten years of this artist, who has already reached 87 and with which the Foundation opens a new stage.

Arriving simultaneously with the vernissage of the new permanent exhibition, the Foundation has done a redistribution of the spaces assigned to temporary exhibitions, which starts with an exhibition of the recent work of Tàpies, chosen by the also artist Perejaume, the director of the center, Josep Sampera, has informed today in a press conference.

The exhibition starts with a dozen of the most recent work of Tàpies, created in the last three years, all of them on paper and lots of ink, such as “Stretched Body” (2008, “Cuerpo estirado”), “Arrow Body” (2008, “Cuerpo flecha”), “Blue Ink” (2007, “Tinta azul”), “Black on Red” (2008, “Negro sobre rojo”), or “White Eyes” (2007 “Ojos blancos”).

In this space, the greater size works are “Black Strip” (2008, “Banda negra”), a piece in black and white that contrasts with “Two Forms of Varnish” (2008, “Dos formas de barniz”), in which two varnish ocher geometric blots standout next to a small cross.
On the first floor of the Foundation, a complete “Gaze at the Hand” suite can be seen where up to now only in a Madrilenian gallery could have been seen and which Tàpies has yielded for the occasion.

Throughout the course of the thirty works, Tàpies shows as in a typographic alphabet, some of the elements of the iconography of his creation, the caligraphic “a” or the crosses.

Near those elements, some parts of the human body can be distinguished with clarity, such as the head, the naked torso or the hands to which the title of these series refer to.

The journey of the exhibition ends with the projection of the documentary “T as in Tàpies” (“T de Tàpies”), directed by Carolina Tubau, in which the artist gives some clues in order to understand his creative process.

In spite of having followed different personal paths and artistic roads, Tàpies and Palau Fabre agreed and cooperated since their mutual commitment for the culture and with Catalonia.

Precisely, Sampera has explained, in the makover fo the areas fot this museum, some Tàpies’ pieces that were already at the Foundation, have been relocated, among them a work of 1978, when Palau Fabre was president of the Catalonian Pen Club, along with a new incorporation, “Raimon”, a CCOO deposit, an original work that the artist donated to the then clandestine syndicate in 1974, for a solidary campaign in favor of the Vietnamese people.

Among the new incorporations to the Foundation, two drawings of the sculptor Juli González and one created by Picasso when he was 20 standout, the latter being a work which Samper has said that “had been erroneously considered to be a fake, and that has been rediscovered by the painter’s daughter, Maya Picasso, in one of her consultations to the Josep Palau Fabre’s Picassian Fund.

Samper has commented that when Palau showed the signed drawing to Picasso, in order to include it in his book “Picasso in Catalonia”, the artist wrote an “X” and the word “faux” (false) on the signature, seeing that it was apocriphal and done afterwards, but Maya Picasso has undone the misunderstanding, since “the false was referred to the signature and not to the drawing”.