Stämpfli Foundation shows Antoni Taulé’s play of lights and space

'Lux' brings together 30 works by the internationally recognized Catalan artist

The work of renowned artist Antoni Taulé is the shining star in the new exhibition at the Stämpfli Foundation, Lux. The exhibition presents 30 paintings and photographs from different periods of his long career that are on display at the Foundation, producing a dialogue between light, space, dimensions and feelings.

Antoni Taulé is one of the most striking artists of the past 50 years. Painter, photographer and set designer, his work has visited some of the most outstanding scenic cathedrals in the world: museums, foundations, theaters or operas have witnessed his creative skills. A number of authors have written about his painting, including Julio Cortázar, Jean-Claude Carrière, Juan Manuel Bonet, Georges Raillard, Annie Le Brun, Harry Mathews or Gilbert Lascault.

Lux stages a double dialog of Antoni Taulé through the instantaneity of photography and the delay of extended painting over the time. In this exhibition, Taulé shows dialectic of emptiness: a dialogue of large interior spaces with light, and at the same time, a dialogue between the space inside and the space outside, which penetrates the picture by a quasi film projection. In the work of Taulé, space and light are fixed in time when they become symbolic and imaginary.

Antoni Taulé returns to Sitges 50 years after he starred an exhibition at Palau Maricel. In 1967, just a year after his first exhibition (at Acadèmia de Belles Arts de Sabadell) Sitges gave him the opportunity to exhibit at Racó de la Calma. A few years later, Taulé began traveling around the world to stop at the world capital of arts, Paris, were he became a recognized figure. From then and during his 50 years of artistic trajectory, Taulé made 75 solo exhibitions and over 200 group exhibitions.

"Magician of life, great bishop of silence, lets light penetrate the darkness in these big deserted mansions [...])." Last year, the prestigious Beaux-Arts Magazine defined his works and personality in these terms, while Art actuel stated, "his interiors become the extension of our dreams"; Paris Match wrote that his work was "fascinating" and Le Monde stressed his "theater of absence."

Antoni Taulé was born in 1945 in Sabadell and lives and works in Paris. He began to paint as a child next to his father and studied architecture in Barcelona. In 1965 he worked in Paris, in 1966 he made his first exhibition at the Acadèmia de Belles Arts de Sabadell, and in 1967 at Palau Maricel. Since then he has organized seventy five individual exhibitions in museums, art centers, foundations and private galleries worldwide, and has participated in more than two hundred collective exhibitions.

Named Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by François Mitterrand; he won the National Prize for Stage Design of the Generalitat of Catalonia with his work Per un sí o per un no (For a yes or a no) authored by Nathalie Sarraute, and the Critics Prize for the stage of La corona d'espines (The crown of thorns) by Josep Maria Sagarra. He performed several decor sets for works by Anton Chekhov, David Mamet, Angel Guimerà, Marguerite Duras, Molière, Mercé Rodoreda, Francis Poulenc, Georges Bernanos and Henry James. In Paris, for the Opéra Garnier, theaters Odeon, Champs Elysees and Rond-Point; at New York, the Metropolitan Opera House, with Rudolf Nureyev- and theaters Samuel Beckett and Harold Churman; at Barcelona, ​​for the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya and Romea and in Madrid for Centro Dramático Nacional...

His paintings are in the collections of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Centre National d'Art Contemporain de  Paris, Tour d'Argent de Tokyo, Hastings Foundation, New York, Consell Insular de Formentera, MACBA, Fundació Vila Casas Fundació Stämpfli, Fundació La Caixa, Fundacíó Banco Sabadell, Fundació Caldes d'Estrac, etc.