About the Work
We might assume that the bed is located in a hospital, a prison or an orphanage. The bedcover's cracked-looking surface, which resembles weathered plaster, and the black grid conjure up associations with a plank bed in a prison. Antoni Tàpies dispenses with the representation of a spatial situation; the legs of the bed, for example, are merely indicated by two round impressions. Like many other artists in the 1960s, Tàpies made everyday items the subject of his painting. They provided him with an excuse to work with widely differing materials, such as thick layers of plaster and sand, glue and paint, with which he repeatedly created exciting relationships between the object and the abstract form. Here, Tàpies has prominently scratched his monogram into the sheet and incorporated it into the composition - a formal aperçu which disconcertingly recalls the initials of Albrecht Dürer.
