Antoni Tapies continues to this day to fulfil a significant role in the post-war art arena of Europe, in particular with his peer Jean Dubuffet. Tapies himself has made certain of his own posterity with the establishment of the Fundacio Antoni Tapiesin his home city of Barcelona. Major museum exhibitions of Tapies' work have continued to proliferate. There was, most recently (2007), that mounted at EMMA - Espoo Museum of Modern Art in Finland, and also that at Museum Schloss Moyland, Bedburg-Hau, Germany. In 2006, solo shows of his work were mounted in, Lisbon, London, New York, Porto and Toulon.

Honours and recognition continue to accumulate. He has become a Commander of the Legion of Honour (France), an Honorary Royal Academician in London and an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His international reputation has long been secure. However, a major international retrospective is now rather overdue. The Waddington Galleries have made the link in the interim with this carefully assembled and researched showing of late work, from 2001 to 2007. It reveals that Tapies is still working well with his powers.

Essentially self-taught, Tapies' global trailblazing still permeates art schools, the art of 'something other' for which students are always questing. For Tapies, a major watershed long ago was his showing of five works at the XXVI Venice Biennale and at the 1952 Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting. In 1954, he became more preoccupied with materiality and texture in his work, using a composite paste of varnish and marble dust, Indian ink, and various powdered pigments. Galerie Stadler in Paris gave him a first solo exhibition in 1956, and he was also included in a major show, 'Recent Abstract Painting', at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. In 1965, Roland Penrose chose to curate an exhibition of his work at the ICA.

In this Waddington exhibition, lesser works such as 'Cat' (2007) and 'Have a Cup of Tea' (2007), more significant works such as 'I am Earth' (2004) and 'Letters on Large Matter' (2007), measuring 5'3" x 10'6", hang with 'Signs on Matter' (2006), a smaller size work. 'Mouth on Torso' (2007) is enigmatic in its human physicality. 'Body and Stick' (2004) is quite the opposite, explicit over flagellated buttocks and unavoidably erotic.

This work casts back to the equally charged 'This is Body' (1998-99), which was a dramatic presence in the National Gallery (London) exhibition 'Encounters'(2000), a highlight of that millennium year, curated by Richard Morphet and masterminded by Neil MacGregor, Director at the time. Tapies' work was painted in response to Rembrandt's 'A Woman Bathing in a Stream' from the National Gallery collection. Tapies' sombre Catalan tonality perfectly matched the earthy brown hues of the Rembrandt he selected. This formed an ingenious juxtaposition and the resultant interaction sponsored by Morphet was awe-inspiring. Where the universality of Rembrandt's treatment of the female body permeates all, here what predominated in Tapies' mind (it is said) was the sense of motherhood. In the context of that exhibition format, Tapies had also considered the National Gallery's 'The Institution of the Eucharist' by Ercole de'Roberti (c. 1490), which held great religious significance for Tapies.

Tapies' deployment of materials such as earth, marble and dust mixed with varnish (as commented above) also reveals minute fragments of stone. Tapies' tendency to recognise and exercise the process of fragmentation, both in materials and imagery, runs through his work. It should also be recalled that Tapies is a Catalan, mindful of the terrible violence most recently created during the Spanish Civil War. He still lives in his home city of Barcelona. The image of the cross also recurs in Tapies' work, and is present in some five of the 15 works displayed in the current show.

As this exhibition shows, Tapies will continue to produce works that have a major contemporary significance. The human predicament is his subject throughout. With some urgency, a major retrospective of his life work is truly now overdue. The Waddington Galleries are to be congratulated on providing this essential marker along the way.

Michael Spens