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, Anna Gual, Gabriel Ventura, José Manuel Cuesta Abad, Valentín Roma and Rasha Omran.

PROGRAMME

SESSION 1 | 27 November 2024

6 pm. Presentation of the seminar by Imma Prieto

6.10 pm. Talk “Tàpies and the Sèrie Teresa: The Fragile Hotbed of Bodies, Silences and Rips in a Secret Image” by Maria Josep Balsach

6.50 pm. Talk “The Intimacy of the T: The Poetic Conceptions in the Sèrie Teresa (1966) and Cartes per a la Teresa (1974)” by Anna Gual

7.30 pm. Poetic reading of “† for Time” by Gabriel Ventura

8 pm. Time for questions

8.30 pm. Close

SESSION 2 | 28 November 2024

6 pm. Presentation of the programme by Imma Prieto

6.10 pm. Talk “Tàpies’ Papers” by José Manuel Cuesta Abad

6.50 pm. Talk “Love as an Artistic Epiphany” by Valentín Roma

7.30 pm. Poetic reading of “I Look in the Depths of the Earth for the Language to Love You” by Rasha Omran

8 pm. Time for questions

8.30 pm. Close

The book «Aquella que va habitar la casa abans que jo», by Rasha Omran, published by Èter Edicions, will be presented at the Fundació Joan Brossa on December 4. Coinciding with the celebration of the seminar, it will be on sale for the first time at the Museu Tàpies bookshop.

Image of Teresa Series, by Antoni Tàpies, exhibited at The Practice of Art at Museu Tàpies. Photo: Pep Herrero