The Denney and Cordier Collections at the Tàpies Foundation

Around sixty works, most from the legacy of the Anthony Denney Collection at Les Abattoirs de Toulouse, complemented by drawings from the Daniel Cordier Collection, are about to go on display at Barcelona's Tàpies Foundation. Both collections are key to understanding the emergence of art informel from the end of the 1940s to the 1960s, a style that found quick commercial success and acceptance among the artistic canons of the time.

The exhibition Documents of Action. Works from the Denney and Cordier Collections (1947–65), which is set to open on the 28th of January at the Tàpies Foundation, can be seen until the 22nd of May. It provides an insight into the theoretical and commercial system of the French art critic Michel Tapié, who helped to popularise an abstraction form of painting that was in line with the explosion of Abstract Expressionism in the United States and the investigations of the Gutai group in Japan, creating a climate of acceptance without which the popularisation of figures such as Antoni Tàpies himself may not have been possible.

The exhibition offers a rereading of artistic objects as signs of past actions that the viewer is unable to witness, the possibility of reading paintings as a chronicle of events or even a document of actions.

Documents of Action. Works from the Denney and Cordier Collections (1947–65)
Where: Tàpies Foundation
When: 28 January to 22 May
Price: €7
For further information, see the Foundation Website