The teeth mentioned in the work's title are at the centre of this painting: reduced to their basic forms and highlighted in white, the mouth section stands out strikingly against the abstract red-blue background. Also shown in white on the right side are the year of creation and other numbers or signs, including a seven and the cross so characteristic of Tàpies.
Individual body parts such as hands or legs as well as outlined faces remained a recurring motif in the works of the 1980s, which Tàpies continued to explore in the following years. In their fragmented figurative representation, these pieces become human codes. As Tàpies concluded: "I want to evoke the human being indirectly – through imprints or parts of the human body." (Catoir 1997, p. 95)
Ultimately, Tàpies put the human being at the centre of his artistic universe without concretising the respective context. He proceeded in a similar way with the ciphers he used as well as the number symbolism he dealt with intensively: from medieval concepts, as developed by Ramon Llull, to baroque thought models and approaches of the Kabbalah.
