J. M. Bonet, Antoni Tàpies, Grup de Treball, “Controversy Tàpies/Spanish Conceptual Group”, translated from Spanish by Isabel Adey from Spanish (excerpts). Originally published as “Polémica Tàpies/Grupo Conceptual Español,” in Revista Lente, no. 21, (November 1973): 20–25.

This chapter presents a polemical debate about Conceptual art between Antoni Tapies and the art collective Grup de Treball, with a prolog by the art historian Juan Manuel Bonet. From 1973 onward the Grup de Treball staged numerous actions, often political in character, denouncing the art system, for instance with a “work” investigating the price of the artists at Documenta in Kassel. It is this type of practice that Tapies’s polemical text “Conceptual art” attacks. When looking at Conceptual art from abroad, including work proposed from specific scenarios in the US, it is interesting to analyze the intentions of this artwork and the impression it makes, and to draw comparisons with reception of this work by certain publicists or reviewers based in Spain or further afield. The difficulties and efforts artists must face in order to keep finding most effective and flexible way to make an impact leave no room for the petit bourgeois conception of an individualized “artist-actor-genius” figure.