Mr. Tàpies (pronounced TAH -
pee -
ess) came to prominence in the late 1940s with richly symbolic paintings strongly influenced by Surrealist painters like Miró and Klee, a style he abandoned by the mid-1950s as he turned to what became his signature work: the heavily built - up surfaces that were often scratched, pitted and gouged and incised with letters, numbers and signs.