Curators: Carles Guerra and Núria Homs.

In the late 1960s Antoni Tàpies increasingly began working with objects. This interest, however, was not new. Tàpies had already entered the world of objects with his first matter paintings, even earlier if you consider works such as Capsa de cordills (Box of Strings) and Fils i argolla (Threads and Ring), both from 1946. In 1956 he made the work Porta metàl·lica i violí (Metal Shutter and Violin) for the window of the Gales clothing store at Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona. This intervention was one of the five nativity scenes organised by Alexandre Cirici. Aiming to be provocative, Tàpies transferred to the interior of a bourgeois store a shrill and ugly object, usually to be found on the outside of shops, and set it in counterpoint to a violin: the new art in opposition to the traditional and classic, the poetry of the street in opposition to the cultural institution.