Antoni Tapies evolved to become one of the first to begin incorporating non artistic materials such as marble, dust and clay into his paint.
This approach echoed the Arte Povera movement in Europe and Abstract Expressionism in the United States.
All of which encouraged the use of different materials and textures.
Tapies began encoporating larger everyday objects in his paintings such as pieces of furniture, ladders, buckets, blinds and he explored the mysticality coded meanings of Objects.
Tapies political empathies influenced his work and after WW2 and the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945, these events sparked his interest in foreign objects and specifically matter.
Antoni Tapies Great Painting 1958
Oil with marble dust and sand on canvas
(79 x 103 1/2 inches (200.7 x 262.9cm)
‘Pintura Materica’ - Material Painting
By calling attention to this seemingly inconsequential matter (marble dust and sand) , he suggested that beauty can be found in unlikely places.
In Great Painting, an ocher skin appears to hang off the surface of the canvas; violence is suggested by the gouge and puncture marks in the dense stratum.