Bozar looks back on the work of Antoni Tàpies (Barcelona, 1923-2012) with a retrospective that travels through time between 1944 and the 1990s. This is the first major exhibition in Belgium to showcase a complete view on the work of the artist with a selection of 122 works reunited at Bozar for the first time after several decades. From early drawings and self-portraits, the exhibition will unfold with his 'matter paintings' of the 1950s and the objects and assemblages of the 1960s and 1970s. It will continue with his varnishes of the 1980s, which he started a few years earlier coinciding with the beginning of democracy in Spain, and will conclude with works from the 1990s, when Tàpies continued the formal and material experimentation that was always at the heart of his practice.

A self-taught artist during the interwar period, Tàpies reflected on the human condition, his historical situation and the artistic practice, especially the limits and contradictions of painting. His very prolific oeuvre is scattered all over the world.