Tàpies is referring to the Franco-repression in Spain.
“

All the walls of a city, which, by family tradition, seemed so mine, witnessed the martyrdom and the inhumane repression inflicted on our people. Cultural memories stressed its urgency. All the archaeological information I have absorbed, the advice of Leonardo da Vinci, the destruction brought about by Dada, the photographs of Brassaï, all contributed, unsurprisingly, to the fact that my first works of 1945 had something to do with street graffiti and a universe of repressed protest, clandestine yet full of life, as one could find on the walls of my country.

— Antoni Tàpies

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "All the walls of a city, which, by family tradition, seemed so mine, witnessed the martyrdom and the inhumane repression inflicted on our people. Cultural memories stressed its urgency. All the archaeological information I have absorbed, the advice of Leonardo da Vinci, the destruction brought about by Dada, the photographs of Brassaï, all contributed, unsurprisingly, to the fact that my first works of 1945 had something to do with street graffiti and a universe of repressed protest, clandestine yet full of life, as one could find on the walls of my country." in the context of "Tàpies is referring to the Franco-repression in Spain." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Antoni Tàpies" (Quotes of Antoni Tàpies: sorted chronologically, after date of the quotes of Tàpies, 1945 - 1970, 'A Report on the Wall' 1970: Quotes of Tàpies from: A Report on the Wall, Antoni Tàpies, text translated from Catalan: 'Comunicació sobre el mur', in 'La pràctica de l'art', Barcelona: Ariel, 1970) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Antoni Tàpies

About Antoni Tàpies

Antoni Tàpies (13 December 1923 – 6 February 2012) was a Spanish Catalan artist, born in Barcelona, who from 1947 on, started to paint in a surrealistic style. Through 'Arte Povare', under the influence of Eastern calligraphy among other things, he soon developed a spontaneous Abstract Expressionism with its own symbolic language.