Antoni Tapies

Grey Ochre

1958

© Foundation Antoni Tapies, Barcelona/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2020

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Not on display

Artist: Antoni Tapies 1923–2012
Original title: Ochre gris
Medium: Oil paint, epoxy resin and marble dust on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 2603 × 1943 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased 1967
Reference: T00927

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Tàpies combined paint with dust, resin and other materials to create rough, densely worked surfaces, a technique that he called ‘matter’ painting. He compared his sombrely coloured paintings to the weather-worn, heavily marked walls of the streets in his native Catalonia, which seemed to bear witness to the sufferings of the Civil War and the repressions of life under General Franco. The critic John Russell described these works as ‘not so much painted as excavated from an idiosyncratic compound of mud, sand, earth, dried blood and powdered minerals.’

Gallery label, July 2012

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Catalogue entry

Antoni Tàpies born 1923

T00927 Ochre gris (Grey Ochre) 1958

Inscribed 'tàpies | 1958' on back of canvas
Oil, latex and marble dust on canvas, 102 1/4 x 76 1/2 (259.7 x 194.3)
Purchased from Anthony Denney (Grant-in-Aid) 1967
Prov: With Galerie Stadler, Paris (purchased from the artist); Anthony Denney, London, 1959
Exh: Tàpies, Galerie Stadler, Paris, April-May 1959 (works not listed); Tapies, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover, February-April 1962 (35, repr.); Kunsthaus, Zurich, April-June 1962 (37, repr.); Painting and Sculpture of a Decade 1954-64, Tate Gallery, April-June 1964 (274, repr.)
Repr: Michel Tapié, Antonio Tapies (Barcelona 1959), pl.46 in colour; Blai Bonet, Tàpies (Barcelona 1964), p.138; Terry Measham, The Moderns 1945-1975 (Oxford 1976), pl.22 in colour

On loan to the Tate Gallery from 1962 until acquired. It has also been known incorrectly as 'Ochre gris LXX'.

Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.715, reproduced p.715