Steven Sangapore

AWAKENING

2020

Oil, mirror and 24k gold leaf on canvas.

Oil on canvas, carved wood frame

Sepukku

Taulé was born in 1945 in Sabadell, Barcelona. His father imparted the taste for painting to Antoni as a boy as the young artist watched him paint. After his primary studies, he began studying architecture in Barcelona and graduated in 1970. In 1965, he arrived in Paris and worked in architectural firms. It was Sartre's Paris, the construction of Unesco, the year of Le Corbusier's death and the end of Chandigarh, the French Cinematheque and Antonioni's films. Since the age of 14, he has never stopped painting and made his first personal exhibition in 1966 at the Academie de Belles Arts in Sabadell. Upon receiving his degree in architecture, he worked on the construction of l’Université autonome de Barcelone for a year. In 1971, he was asked to work on the development of a large shipyard on the small island of Formentera. There he met Laetitia Ney of Elchingen, who he would go on to marry. He devoted himself entirely to painting, and Formentera, like Paris, became one of his favorite places in both his life and to work. His first exhibition in Paris was in 1975 with Mathias Fels, presented to him by Hervé Télémaque—showing many paintings of his young daughter Djamilla, then three years old. The exhibition was titled, Espace hors temps (Space out of Time), with a foreword by Alain Jouffroy. In 1976, Taulé exhibited Contre-Jour (Against Day) at Fabien Boulakia on rue Bonaparte with a preface by Gérald Gassiot-Talabot and in Barcelona at the Aimé Maeght gallery—an exhibition visited by Joan Miró and Alexander Calder. In 1977, he exhibited at the Beaubourg gallery, with then associates Nahon and Trigano. In 1983, he met Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar, who wrote the novella Fin d’étape (End of Stage) for Taulé That same year, he was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) by Jack Lang...