Details
The image
A surface rather than a picture: scratched, scraped, layered, with a few marks that could be letters or could be wounds. The palette is earth and grey, the texture is the subject and the composition refuses to settle into a shape you can name.
Where it comes from
The work belongs to Antoni Tàpies and to the current of post-war European painting that turned to the material itself, plaster, sand, cloth, as a way of refusing both figuration and pure abstraction: work made in the 1950s and 1960s in which the wall, rather than the canvas, is the subject. Tàpies argued that the argument was political as much as aesthetic. After a war that had used images for propaganda, a scratched surface was a way of saying something without illustrating it.
On the wall
It behaves like a piece of masonry, so it suits rooms with strong materials: a study, a hallway with stone or concrete, a living room with dark wood. Because the palette is muted and the texture is fine, it needs good light. In a group it should be the quietest piece.
In company
Pairs well with photography and with raw materials and it looks best in a simple frame without a wide mount. Avoid very colourful neighbours, the surface would read as dirt rather than as texture. Hung lower than usual. It reads as a wall fragment, which is what it is meant to be. A second sheet from the Modern collection will balance it rather than compete.
