- Ala Vermelha,
by the famous Catalan painter Antoni Tàpies, is a fantastic example of his rich and visceral pictorial work. This painting from 2001 shows the ochre and sepia tones typical of his works, where the red and black elements stand out. The texture given by the application of marble dust and the use of gestures and "graffiti" symbols confer the appearance of a mural painting, whose soundness seems to be supported by the choice of wood as work surface.

Tàpies' work is characterised by extensive and experimental exploration of materials that are somehow associated with everyday life, far from the use of noble oil or acrylic painting. Throughout his career it has become evident that his paintings become objects of resistance, provoking a strong reaction from those who observe them. The work mentioned here belongs to a phase in his work in which he seeks to explore the human body, often fragmented and in pain, which ultimately becomes a constant in his subsequent artistic research.

The portrait of a beheaded angel, red-winged as the title suggests, achieves a tragic violence, worked in a raw and primitive way. The almost naive way in which the body is represented is in line with his ideas of revaluing what is seen by society as undignified or even repulsive. The human condition and the weakness of the body, which the artist himself faced during his lifetime, seem central to this work, mystified by its pictorial granularity interrupted by the crosses in the middle, a gesture that almost acts as Tàpies' signature.