Overview

“The architectural, constructive sense of my painting produces a dissociation between drawing and color that remain as two separate entities.”

Joaquín Torres-García (Montevideo, Uruguay, 1874 – Montevideo, Uruguay, 1949) is renowned as both an artist and theoretician. His family moved to Spain when he was young, and he studied with a local painter before enrolling at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, where he met both Pablo Picasso and Antoni Gaudí. He collaborated with Gaudí on the designs for the stained glass windows for the Palma Cathedral and the Sagrada Família. He moved to Paris in 1920 and became involved with the various avant-garde movements of the time, including Cubism, Dada, and Constructivism, ultimately developing his mature style known as Universal Constructivism. He always sought ways to combine classicism with modernity. He returned to Montevideo in 1934 and founded a journal in order to expose artists there to the new ideas in Europe. In 1942, he founded the Taller Torres-García school, which was based on the Bauhaus model. As such, he was a pivotal figure with regard to Latin American art’s development, seeking to combine abstraction with the Indigenous art of Uruguay.

Works
  • Joaquín Torres-García, Untitled, 1934
    Joaquín Torres-García
    Untitled, 1934
    Woodcut on Japan paper
    11 x 9 7/8 in (27.8 x 25 cm)
    Edition of 50
Projects
Stories
Press