Lot 120
Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012)
Lot 120 Details
Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012), Spanish
BLACK ON WHITE, NO. 2 (ONE OF THE "BLACK LITHOGRAPHS" EXECUTED IN 1959)
Lithograph; signed and numbered 11/50 in pencil to margin, titled and dated to gallery label verso
Image/Sheet sight 24.3 x 35.4 in — 61.8 x 90 cm; 26.4 x 37.6 in — 67 x 95.4 cm
Estimate $2,000-$3,000
Additional Images
Provenance:
Galerie Dresdnere, Toronto, No. 6881 and inscribed “EGG 78” to gallery label verso;
Private Collection, Toronto
Literature:
See the Exhibition catalogue "Antoni Tapies in Print," organized by Deborah Wye, Curator, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, May 6 - August 9, 1992, https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_366_300063054.pdf
Note:
This rare lithograph is one of Tàpies’ earliest untitled lithographs, referred to as the “Black Lithographs”, executed in 1959 when he began experimenting with printmaking. In the late 1950s, Miquel and Joan Gaspar, cousins who ran the Sala Gaspar family gallery in Barcelona where Tàpies exhibited, invited the artist to have his first lithographs published by their firm. In the MOMA catalogue, Deborah Wey describes Tàpies’ experimental approach to the medium, “In 1959, he devised unusual methods to achieve surface patterning. He sprinkled sawdust and sprayed ink from mosquito sprayers or squeezed it through cracks in broken glass.”