When asked what the meaning of his paintings was, Joaquin Torres-Garcia answered:
‘To restore to art the universal and humanist spirit of antiquity by seeking the true foundation of works; to reestablish a universal human tradition. For humans are taken here as the measure of all things, and therefore as the basis of a balanced culture.
These works are conceived to be executed on a large scale as monumental works, although the present works are already complete realizations in themselves. They should be carried out in stone, glass, mosaic, ceramics, fresco, textiles, and other noble techniques of earlier times. It is the idea of an art that in another age might have been a collective endeavor but today must necessarily be the work of an individual.
As for the work itself, its system of organization is founded upon universal principles, and its graphic language is no more than a suggestion in that same direction. Ultimately, this work aspires only to awaken a world that we already possess within ourselves; for this reason, it is a language of order.’
New York City: Bird's Eye View, 1920, Yale University Art Gallery, Connecticut.
Woman with fruit, 1926, Museo Torres-Garcia, Montevideo.
Café Riche- Paris, 1928, Dallas Museum of Art, Texas.
Untitled Composition, 1929, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C
Head, 1930, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania.
Constructive Painting, 1931, The Met Fifth Avenue, New York.
Universal Symmetrical Composition in Black and White, 1931, Fundación Malba, Buenos Aires.
Black and White Constructive, 1932, Musée d'arts de Nantes, France.
Abstract Form with Triangles, 1936, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Universal Composition, 1938, The Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Construction in White and Black, 1938, MoMa The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Composition, 1938, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Interlaced Forms on a Red Background, 1938, Newark Museum of Art, New Jersey.
Construction with White Line, 1938, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Portrait, 1939, Colby Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine.
Constructive Work with Color Planes and Graphic Elements, 1943, Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, D.C..
Joaquin Torres-García (1874–1949) was one of the most vibrant and vital forces in modern art. Born in Uruguay and raised in Spain, he was an artist, writer, teacher, and theorist whose prolific and varied oeuvre was founded on a classical education while driven by an innovative creative spirit.
As an artist, Torres-García created a unique visual language he termed Constructivism. Whether non-representational or representational, Torres-García’s compositions were organized by geometry. The cornerstone of every work, Torres-García said, was structure, one should adhere to principles of proportion, such as the Golden Ratio, in order to preserve harmony throughout the artwork.
He moved between Europe and the Americas—working in Barcelona, New York, Florence, Paris, Madrid, and Montevideo. He authored more than 150 books and essays, including Structure, Constructive Art, The Story of My Life, and Constructive Universalism.
He founded influential art schools and groups, including the Escola de Decoració (School of Decoration) in Barcelona; the first European abstract-art group Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square) in Paris which brought together artists such as Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky; the Grupo de Arte Constructivo (Constructive Art Group) in Madrid; and the Taller Torres-García (Torres-García’s Workshop) in Montevideo.
Joaquín Torres-García has been the subject of major museum exhibitions and is represented in the collections of institutions around the world including Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris.
‘Never stop. Never walk the same path twice. Routine is useless. Habit, worthless. Resist classification. Don’t accept a label. Let’s be unclassifiable, beyond definition.’
- Joaquín Torres-García
Figures of Man and Woman Resting, 1914.
Forms on White, 1924, MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona.
Guitar, 1924, MoMa The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Two-Button Character, 1927, The Centre Pompidou. Paris.
Shelf with Cup, 1928, Museum Ludwig, Cologne.
Planes of Colour with Two Superimposed Pieces of Wood, 1928, MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona.
Untitled, 1929, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC.
Construction in wood, 1929, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.
Abstract Form, 1929.
Construction with Curved Forms, 1931, MoMa The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Plastic Object-Constructive Composition, 1931 Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC.
Composition 1934 IVAM Institut Valencià d’Art Modern.
‘Barnett Newman, among the New York School’s most sharp-witted interlocutors and an admirer of “primitive” art, found a kindred, metaphysical spirit in Torres-García, over whose work he marveled at the Janis show. “Newman was able to understand the subtle use of symbolism better than any other artist,” Janis recalled. “He came to the gallery every day and explained to other artists his interpretation of them through knowledge of ancient graphic expression, mythology, philosophy, archaeology, Zen, etc.” For Newman and the emergent New York School, Torres-García’s doctrine of Constructive Universalism—expressed through the assimilation of pictographic symbols within the ideal geometry of the grid—epitomized the identity, and plausible originality, of American abstraction.’
by Abigail McEwen
The return, 1915
Untitled, c. 1916
New York, 1921 page from watercolor notebook.
New York, 1922 Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania.
Constructive Train, 1930 Fundación Mapfre, Madrid.
Swift journeys toward the sun — hope, 1930.
Untitled, 1931.
Universal Art, 1933 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Constructive drawing, 1935 The Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires.
Constructivist Art, 1938 Fundación Mapfre, Madrid.
Untitled, 1947.
‘… The figurative forms that appear in Torres-García's Constructivist pictures … he himself uses the term “sign” to refer to them. But there is another more convincing argument: in contrast to the schematic forms that in a Cubist painting refer to a palette or an absinthe glass, the schematic forms of Torres-García do not represent things, but rather the “ideas of things,” to use the expression chosen by the author himself. That is why what we see in Torres-García’s paintings are always complete forms and not fragmentary, such as those found in Cubist art. For in mental representation, objects always appear complete because they are presented as types; from an empirical viewpoint, we recognize them as objects regardless of their fragmented representation.
Torres-García emphasizes this condition of an ideal type attributed to represented objects by writing them with uppercase initials. For him, the schematic drawing does not represent a ship (this or that ship), a house (this or that one), but the Ship, (thus, with a capital S), and the House. In this sense, the painted schema is a sign. This pictorial language, built by Torres-García following these schemas, is a deliberately constructed language of signs.’
by Tomas Llorens
Joaquín Torres-García in Barcelona, c.1894.
Joaquín Torres-García at the construction site of the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona c. 1903-5.
Manolita and Joaquín Torres-García, Barcelona. 1909.
Manolita, Joaquín Torres-García, and Olimpia, 1913.
The family at the house designed by Joaquín Torres-García in Terrassa, Spain c.1915.
Joaquín Torres-García painting in his studio, Barcelona. c. 1918.
Cadiz, Spain 1934.
Arrival at Montevideo, Uruguay 1934.
Joaquín Torres-García delivering a radio lecture, c. 1934.
Joaquín Torres-García supervising the construction of Cosmic Monument, Montevideo, c. 1937.