When it opened in 1990, this became the third Barcelona museum devoted to the work of a single, prolific artist (the others are museums for Miró and Picasso). In 1984 the Catalan artist Antoni Tàpies set up a foundation bearing his name, and the city of Barcelona donated an ideal site: the old Montaner i Simon publishing house. One of the city's landmark buildings, the brick-and-iron structure was built between 1881 and 1884 by that important exponent of Catalan moderniste architecture, Lluis Doménech i Montaner, also perpetrator of the Casa Lleó Morera around the corner . The core of the museum is a collection of works by Tàpies (mostly contributed by the artist) covering stages of his career as it evolved into abstract expressionism. Here you can see the entire spectrum of media in which he worked: painting, assemblage, sculpture, drawing, and ceramics. His associations with Picasso and Miró are apparent. The largest of the works is on top of the building: a controversial gigantic sculpture, Cloud and Chair, made from 2,700m (8,858 ft.) of metal wiring and tubing. The lower floor is used for temporary exhibitions, nearly always on contemporary art and photography, and the upper floor has a library with an extremely impressive section on Oriental art, one of the artist's inspirations.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Barcelona, 3rd Edition, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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