For Barcelona Gallery Weekend, the Galeria Toni Tàpies is proposing an exhibition project entitled Roba blanca (White Linens), which reflects on the value and meaning of the most intimate object in Tàpies’ pictorial work. On display will be a selection of pieces in which we will find a constant return to a series of very specific items: his personal belongings, things the artist had to hand at home or in his studio; close, familiar, simple and useful objects, among them handkerchiefs, scarves, socks, slippers, pieces of white fabric that had a life and were then abandoned and no longer used.

The abandoned object no longer used for the purpose for which it was created is also a cherished item, and for this reason it is difficult to part company with it, to cast it aside for good. In these works, we can identify everyday elements that were part of the artist’s most private experiences and which were given a new existence in the form of a collage on fabric or wood; once they had been manipulated, impregnated with paint or varnish, they were reborn and acquired a symbolic and universal meaning.