In the years after the Second World War, the Catalan artist Antoni Tàpies (1923–2011) was in his early 20s and in search of his artistic voice. Tàpies was connected to the Surrealists, his paintings influenced by Paul Klee and Joan Miró. But in the early 1950s Tàpies found himself drawn to mixed media—a style called pintura matèrica (material painting). He coated his paintings with clay and marble dust, and began placing paper, strings, and even rags on his canvases. Tàpies was deft and profound in the art he made from odd matter. To celebrate the centenary of his birth, this retrospective starts with his matter paintings of the 1950s and concludes with work from the last two decades of his life. —Elena Clavarino