b. Barcelona, Spain, 1923–2012
Pants and Woven Wire
1973
Cloth, wire, yarn, wood, and paint
82 × 66 3/8 in. (208.3 × 168.6 cm)
The Martha Jackson Memorial Collection: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David K. Anderson, 1980 (80.103)
© 2021 Comissió Tàpies / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VEGAP, Madrid. Photo: Lee Stalsworth
In the late 1940s, Antoni Tàpies began to incorporate unconventional elements—chalk, newspaper, and concrete, for example—into his oil paintings to further amplify the texture of his heavily impastoed style, a move signaling what would become his lifelong exploration of the formal and conceptual possibilities within even the most mundane materials. The large-scale, wall-based textile Pants and Woven Wire is made up of a rough-hewn wood frame that supports an irregular weaving in which a pair of cropped, tattered pants is suspended upside-down. Equal parts enigmatic, whimsical, and unsettling in its allusions to torture or violence, Pants and Woven Wire exemplifies the way in which Tàpies transformed the everyday into a metaphor of human frailty and suffering. He explained: “I placed the pants in the form of a V to signify victory. The oppressed, humble, and conquered are what conquers.”
