The Catalan painter, object- and graphic artist Antoni Tàpies is regarded the most important representative of the Spanish Informel.
The self-taught artist Antoni Tàpies examined the works by Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Paul Klee at a young age and would soon find his way to a gestic abstraction. In 1948 Antoni Tàpies is among the founding members of the group "Dau al Set", which attained an informal abstraction through the reception of the surrealistic "écriture automatique". The oeuvre of Antoni Tàpies is characterized by a relief-like conception with a strong emphasis on the material: In pastose material pictures and collages that have strong haptic as well as optical effects, Antoni Tàpies experimented with materiality and proved to be one of the most imaginative artists of his generation.
Having gained international recognition in the 1950, Antoni Tàpies was honored in numerous exhibitions all over the world, e.g. in large retrospectives in Frankfurt (1993), Paris (1994) and New York (1995).