Antoni Tàpies presents his paintings at the Venice Biennale, 1958Photograph: Archivio Cameraphoto Epoche/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

“The exhibition “Tàpies, lo Sguardo dell’ artista-The eye of the artist” is, for me, a way of thanking him and showing the world how this man, my father, now an essential figure in the history of art, painted, and how he conceived creative art.” -Toni Tàpies, son of Antoni Tàpies

Respected Catalan artist Antoni Tàpies, who died in February 2012 after gaining the highest recognition and having become a towering figure in 20th century art, presents his legacy as an artist and as a collector in the enchanting venue of Palazzo Fortuny in Venice. This institution, the former home, studio, showroom and "think-tank" of Mariano Fortuny, eclectic designer and collector, who acquired the venue at the beginning of the 20th century, has become known for organizing art exhibitions that stunningly mix contemporary and ancient art, challenging the borderline between art, architecture and interior design. The current exhibition The Eye of the Artist pays homage to the genius of Tàpies by highlighting his artistic journey as an art creator and an art lover, by relating the pieces on view to the peculiar architecture of this gothic-style palace, which can be visited exclusively during temporary shows.

In this challenging yet exceptional setting, forty outstanding pieces by the Catalan artist shown for the very first time and selected from Antoni Tàpies’ own house are juxtaposed with the wide-ranging collection of Mariano Fortuny and with a selection of forty masterpieces collected by Tàpies himself during his life. Picasso, Klee, Motherwell -who is also present with his early collages at the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation in Venice- Kounellis, Lucio Fontana, Goya, Kandinsky alongside African, Indian, Pre-Columbian, Oceanic and Far Eastern art are presented on site. Tributes by some of the greatest artists alive today who were close to Tàpies or whose work relates to the same questions Tàpies was preoccupied with contribute to create a true Wunderkammer that acts as a prism through which read the artist’s spiritual and artistic journey. Anthony Caro, Lawrence Carroll, Sadaharu Horio, Tsuyoshi Maekawa, Kichizaemon XV Raku, ShiroTsujimura and Gunther Uecker are among the selected artists who, inspired by the free spirit of Tàpies, present their works in the same venue.

Picasso and Antoni Tàpies. Notre-Dame-de-Vie, 1967

It was on a visit to Tàpies’s home in Barcelona, some years ago, that Axel Vervoordt –an antique dealer, one of the creative minds behind Palazzo Fortuny’s artistic renaissance and its most recent and most successful exhibits as well as one of the curators of the current show- discovered how Tàpies’ practice as an artist “was also reflected in and inspired by his private collection”. Tàpies’ collection encompasses work by 20th-century masters and, as Vervoordt declares, he had never met someone “whose vision on collecting bore such resemblance to our own. Not so much the art works themselves, but rather the way of assembling and juxtaposing objects. It’s Tàpies’ instinctive way of collecting that felt familiar to me and his search for an archetypical all-connecting thread.” Toni Tàpies, the artist child who also worked as one of the curators of this show, remembers as a child finding the African art “a little scary”, but was aware too of the strong relationship his father had with his collection that grew also thanks to the curiosities found by Tàpies around the world during his many journeys: “The collection was growing and we were growing,” he says. “He wanted everything around him. He was seeking the special energy of these pieces.” It is not surprising that art for Antoni Tàpies, was "that play of emptiness and fullness which composes everything and which reveals the meaning of nature."

Pablo Picasso, Le coq saigné, 1947, oil on wood, 80x99 cm. © Pablo Picasso

One of the most emblematic pieces on view is the painting by Tàpies The Esfinx (1989), one of the highlights of the exhibition. It refers to an Egyptian Sphinx, but also to the Venetian representation of Saint Marc - the lion - which is the symbol of the city of Venice. Apart from these symbols, it is built up with scratches and incised with letters, numbers and signs, thus characteristic for Tàpies’ oeuvre. “In our world, in which religious images are losing their meaning, in which our customs are getting more and more secular, we are losing our sense of the eternal,” Antoni Tàpies said on the BBC arts program “Omnibus” in 1990. “I think it’s ...a loss that has done a great deal of damage to modern art. Painting is a return to origins.”

Antoni TàpiesThe Esfinx

Antoni Tàpies was also fascinated by contemporary music and composers such as Schöenberg, Alban Berg, Shelsi, John Cage and Anton Webern. A selection of their work will be played throughout the Palazzo during the course of the exhibition, thus creating a total artwork, a synthesis of various media that meet in Tàpies’ work. Also on display several important art books containing powerful lithographs produced by Tàpies in collaboration with writers and poets. These books include El Pa a la Barca, 1963 by Joan Brossa, La nuit grandissante, 1968 by Jacques Dupin, Air, 1971 by André du Bouchet, and Roman Elegies, 1993 by Joseph Brodsky, amongst others.

During his lifetime, Tàpies gained a gold medal for the Fine Arts from King Juan Carlos, an honorary degree from the Royal College of Art in London (1981), and the painting prize at the Venice Biennale in 1993. He exhibited in the most prominent venues for contemporary art and his work is part of leading collections, such as: Tate Britain, London, England; Tate Modern, London, England; Irish Museum of Modern Art - IMMA, Dublin, Ireland; MOCA Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA; MoMA - Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Museo Guggenheim de Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo, Bilbao; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofí­a MNCARS, Madrid, Spain; Museu d´Art Contemporani de Barcelona - MACBA, Barcelona, Spain; ARTIUM Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. Tàpies used to leave aside genres to investigate a “universal power” in things. This exhibition is organised by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and the Axel and May Vervoordt Foundation and is curated by Toni Tàpies, Natasha Hébert, Daniela Ferretti, and Axel Vervoordt.

Tàpies with one of his works in 1981Photograph: Sophie Bassouls/Sygma/Corbis

The small canvas “Ulls i creus en vertical” (2008) hangs above a bronze, painted sculpture of an armchair, “La Butaca” (1970) in the first studio-like room of the show

Antoni Tàpies (front) and Jannis Kounellis’collage work (left)

Antoni Tàpies and Robert Motherwell’s “Untitled” (1963)

Antoni Tàpies in dialogue with the collection of Mariano Fortuny

Günther Uecker’s “Trees and Nails-A Tribute to Tàpies” (2008-2013)

Antoni Tàpies in dialogue with the collection of Mariano Fortuny