Plastic Dialogues between Tàpies and Black African Art

Considering the ethnocentric pespectives mediating most approaches to Black-African art by Western artists, Tàpies eganges in a more profound search for a meaningfulness that gives sense to the particular shapes of Black-African carvings and masks. The aim of this paper is to analyse the ways in which Tàpies' oeuvre absoerved and reflected the influence of black African art, establishing a conceptual rather than formal dialogue. In contrast with other painters like Picasso, whose relationship with African art did not go beyond the formal appropriation within the primitivistic paradigms of colonialism, Tàpies establishes a dialogue with African art in conceptual terms, approaching the artistic problems of an intercultural synthesis while respecting the context that black African art generates and defines beyond particular manifestations.