Conference: I, you, world: Symbol and universe

This retrospective exhibition spotlights the work of Antoni Tàpies, but also his life, as well as the people around him. Teresa Barba Fàbregas, who he married in 1954, was his travelling companion and the person who experienced at first hand the construction of a language of his own and the forging of one of the most important figures of the second artistic avant-garde, both nationally and internationally.

In this respect, for the first time the Museu Tàpies is organising conference on the series of 56 drawings entitled Sèrie Teresa (1966) and the portfolio of 66 lithographs, lithocollages and collages entitled Cartes per a la Teresa [Letters for Teresa] (1974). The first is a long love letter with explicit allusions to domesticity and shared sexuality, and a compendium of the signs Tàpies generally used. The second refers to the love letters he exchanged with Teresa Barba during his stay in Paris in from 1950 to 1951. It is therefore a set of material that discusses poetry, art and writing form a holistic point of view that transcends language itself. The series reveals a world that is only decipherable by the couple, but at the same time allows free interpretation by the spectator, ranging from everyday experience to the universal. In this respect, the conference meet a need to give a new dimension to the series, establishing new connections and meanings from the metaphor of words and fleshing out the cosmic dimension of gesture.

The conference I, You, World: Symbol and Universe will feature theorists from the fields of art and poetry and pots such as Maria Josep Balsach, José Manuel Cuesta Abad, Ana Gorría, Anna Gual and Rasha Omran.

The full programme will be announced soon.