Museu Tàpies

The contrast of the swirling mass of wires above the roof of the handsome Museu Tàpies, formerly known as Fundació Antoni Tàpies, gives a clue of what to expect inside. The grand red-brick building in Barcelona is an example of Catalan Modernism, designed by the architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner and built between 1880 and 1881. Once a publishing house, today the space is dedicated to contemporary art and maintains one of the world’s largest collections of works by its namesake, the renowned Catalan artist, activist and art theorist Antoni Tàpies, whose famous work “Cloud and chair” (1990) crowns the rooftop. With a strong focus on research and education, the museum regularly hosts temporary exhibitions, symposia, lectures and film screenings, in addition to a robust exhibition program centered on Tàpies’s complex oeuvre, which was inspired by symbolism, dadaism, surrealism and abstraction.