Antoni Tàpies i Puig was born in Barcelona on the 13th December 1923 into a traditionally liberal, middle-class family.
As he himself has declared on more than one occasion, "the civil war marked me deeply", and when, later, he was convalescing from tuberculosis, "the year of rest gave me the chance to think and to read, so that, once I was cured, I began to paint".
His first steps in painting were centred on making collages built up from bits of newspapers, tin foil and string, as well as earthy painting with scrape-marks and graffiti.
In 1948, Tàpies joined the group of artists and writers who founded the "Dau el set" avant-garde movement, inspired by, among others, the poet Joan Brossa and the painters Joan Ponc, Modest Cuixart, Arnauld Puig and J.J. Tharrats.
Around 1949, he began to create paintings which were generally grey interrupted by bright colours (green, red), in which the impression of textiles, signs (semicircles, triangles) and deformed letters (especially large "X"s) appeared. In 1950 he obtained a grant to study in Paris, the city where he held his first exhibition five years later. There, his work felt the influence of Joan Miró, Paul Klee y Max Ernst. Also in 1955, he won a prize at the III Biennial of Spanish-America, held in barcelona, and also had a exhibition in Stockholm, together with Tharrats, presented by Dalí. In 1958 he obtained a special gallery at the Biennial of Venice and won the Carnegie Prize, and in 1962 he won the Salomon Guggeheim Museum Award.
In 1954 Tàpies had again allowed the material into his works: he physically worked the paintings with impasto (mixing powdered marble into oil paints, and using powdered pigments dissolved in latex), and thus managed to rediscover the tradition of a sad, charred, fossilized world.
His period after 1965 belongs to neo-figurative art and "arte pauvre": sack cloth, rustic and everyday objects. "Grey matter in the shape of a hat", "Three chairs" and "X and two crosses" belong to this period.
In the 1973 the Paris Museum of Modern Art organized an exhibition with 82 of his main works, which would later be shown in various European countries.
In April 1988, the Barcelona City Council organized a grand exhibition in tribute to Tàpies, under the title "Tàpies, the Eighties", and in June of the same year he was invested as a doctor "honoris causa" of the University of Barcelona.
In recent years, Tàpies has shown his works over half the world, principally in Europe and America.
He is also the author of several books, among which one might mention "El arte contra la estética", "La práctica del arte", "Serra d'or" or the autobiography, "Memoria Personal". In 1980 he illustrated a book of poems by Jorge Gullén entitled "Repertorio de junio".
In March 1990, the sculpture which crowns the Tàpies Foundation's building in Barcelona was inaugurated. The work, "Cloud and chair", is a framework of 2,750 metres of anodized aluminium tubing and 1,250 square metres of stainless steel metallic cloth.