Today is Tàpies is a series of conversations across generations and disciplines, led and moderated by arts journalist Rita Roig (Terrassa, 1997) and organised by the Fundació Antoni Tàpies as part of the Tàpies Centenary Year. It sets out to interpret the artist’s texts as a starting point to discuss current issues such as environmentalism, self-determination for peoples, interculturality and the political commitment of art.

The series will encourage people to think about the artist’s words and thoughts though thirteen events at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies involving people from a range of professional backgrounds (arts, education, science, politics, the environment, health and life sciences) and different generations. Altogether it will construct a polyphonic dialogue that will be recorded in podcast form thanks to cooperation with Catalunya Ràdio, in order to recover and experience the knowledge generated in a different format and a different context.

Chapter 7: Towards an emancipating spirituality

In his writing, Antoni Tàpies often talked about spirituality. In the face of the idea that modernity might end up freeing us from faith and religious beliefs, Tàpies argued that spiritual progress had to go hand in hand with the scientific, technological and political advances of the day. Tàpies believed that artists had an important role to play in this progress. Taking up an idea of Paul Klee whereby the artist is “an intermediary, a transmitter or nature”, Tàpies argued that the job of artists was to pass on a spirituality suited to modern times. In this conversation, Eugènia Balcells and Pilar Bonet will deal with the pairing of art and spirituality, a relationship that has existed since the beginning of time, leaving examples that show how creativity has been a way of passing on knowledge of the beyond, of the intangible.