In our world, in which religious images are losing their meaning, in which our customs are getting more and more secular, we are losing our sense of the eternal. I think it's a loss that has done a great deal of damage to modern art. Painting is a return to origins.
In an interview on the BBC arts program 'Omnibus', (1990); as quoted in 'Antoni Tàpies a Painter With Textures, Dies at 88', by William Grimes, in 'The New York Times', 8 Febr, 2012, p. B17