Capsa de cordills
Author
Antoni Tàpies
Title
Capsa de cordills (Box of Strings)
Date
1946
Medium
Mixed media on cardboard
Sizes
48 x 40 cm
Register Number
34
Comments
During the two-year period 1946-47 Tàpies made a set of works with simple materials that were not used in traditional artistic practice, such as ropes, cords, rice, curtain rings, lace, threads, newspaper, tin foil, cardboard, boxes... In a difficult postwar period, and in a political context of lack of freedom under the Franco regime, the use of ‘poor’ materials, which Tàpies had to hand, allowed him to denounce the misery, harshness and drabness of daily life at that time. He also wanted to oppose the academic and reactionary artistic practice supported by the Franco regime and by certain sectors of Catalan society with the use of a visual language that would be an affront to the official and conservative aesthetic taste of the moment, and provoke a shock, a reaction in the viewer.
