On Antoni Tàpies:
“A concentration on substances was a means to transform material presence into spiritual lucidity….
“Marks and traces that instead of seeming compositionally calculated, possess an enigmatic, almost autonomous character approaching the immediacy and compelling presence of walls marked by the effects of weather and human use…
“His imagery conveys a profound sense of humanity and a specifically Spanish mystique, bound up with an earthy elemental materiality suffused with the energies of intuitive action…
“Feelings of passionate surrender as much as of aversion, concern, melancholy; states of philosophical detachment and clairvoyant vision; meditation and ecstasy; occasional reverberations of visual realities or gestures that, recalling something familiar or strange, are distilled into pure sign…
“Concentrated entirely on the metaphysical, spiritual aspect of sensually perceived materials…
All quotes from the forward by Anna Agusti.
Many thanks to Betty Brown for the introduction; read some of her thoughts here.