Il silenzio della materia. La poetica del Muro di Antoni Tàpies

VII-VI-MMXXIV

A small and interesting book on Antoni Tàpies, authored by Massimo Recalcati, has just been released by Marsilio. Those of us who frequent his works in galleries have read it and found an original psychoanalytic perspective on the work of the Catalan master. Many reflections start from the works but arrive directly to us and our lives, such as the one on the cross, a symbol used by the artist in his works, “which oscillates towards the X of the enigma or the X of the unknown,” an X that “arises from the erasure of the Self.” Or the approach to the poetics of the wall. Paintings that transform into walls and the colors gray, black, and ocher, a renunciation of the shortcuts of color and form.

We are interested in it because it reflects on the artist’s creative process and the metaphorical power of his expressive choices. Recalcati writes: “encountering the reality of one’s own wall does not mean falling into a hopeless silence, but making this silence the material for a previously unthinkable poetics.”

Massimo Recalcati, Il silenzio della materia. La poetica del Muro di Antoni Tàpies, Marsilio, 2024.