Presentation of the book “Tàpies i jo. Una exegesi recíproca” [Tàpies and I: A Reciprocal Exegesis], by Rita Segato

First edition of the International Essay Prize ‘Gestures of the Past, Thought of the Present’

The Museu Tàpies hosts the public presentation of the book Tàpies i jo. Una exegesi recíproca, which has arisen from the first edition of the International Essay Prize ‘Gestures of the Past, Thought of the Present’. The ceremony features the participation of Rita Segato, author of the publication; Imma Prieto, director of the Museu Tàpies; and Pablo Allepuz, curator of the collection.

The centennial of the birth of Antoni Tàpies (in 2023–2024) inaugurated a new stage in the manner his massive visual, literary and institutional legacy is approached. Following on the experience of that commemorative year, the museum has set up new structures for research and collaboration, such as with the Antoni Tàpies – UPF Chair in Contemporary Art and Thought—developed with the Universitat Pompeu Fabra—and the Institute of Critical Derives, encouraging interdisciplinary dialogue in inciting new ways of understanding the artist. This is the context of the International Essay Prize ‘Gestures of the Past, Thought of the Present’, which in each edition invites a theoretical to write an essay on Tàpies, reflecting their own expertise and knowledge.

The first invitee was Rita Segato, an internationally-recognised Argentine anthropologist and a key figure in feminist and decolonial thought. Free from the habitual conditions of artistic historiography, her perspective offers a new reading of Tàpies. Segato shifts the image of an artist centred on the self—author of his own autobiography, founder of the institution that bears his name—toward that self-questioning facet of Tàpies that is constantly shifting to a place outside of himself, open to alterity and reflection on the other. This reciprocal exegesis between Segato and Tàpies sketches out connections between anthropology and art, between matter and spirituality, between ethics and aesthetics. In her essay, the writer proposes seven ways to renew the study of Tàpies, opening Tàpies studies up to new frameworks of understanding on identity, belonging and the political meaning of creation. From a reading of gesture as a form of knowledge, to the connection between historical memory and present-day struggles, the book reveals Tàpies to be deeply contemporary, able to continually give rise to critical thinking out of the here and now.

Published in Catalan and Spanish, this work opens a new, stable editorial line of activity on the part of the Museu Tàpies, dedicated to the encouragement of research and the promotion of new perspectives on the artist’s work, in dialogue with current debates in contemporary thought.

[Artwork: Antoni Tàpies, Self Portrait, 1992 © Comissió Tàpies / VEGAP, 2025 ]