Torres García, Joaquín (1874–1949)

Joaquín Torres García (b. 25 July 1874; d. 8 August 1949), Uruguayan painter and sculptor. Born in Montevideo, Torres García lived in France, Spain, and New York City from 1892 to 1932. He executed a number of murals and the stained-glass windows of the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca. He was a founding member of both the Cercle et Carré in Paris (1930) and the Asociación de Arte Constructivo in Montevideo (1935). Torres García considered himself a realist. Because of his passion for geometry, order, synthesism, construction, and rhythm, Angel Kalenberg spoke of the linguistic quality of Torres García's art, characterizing his creations as ideograms. His work provides an interesting example of pictorial duality, purely plastic elements being sensitively and skillfully fused with the expression of personal feeling. Among his publications are Structure (1935), The Tradition of Abstract Man (1938), The Metaphysics of Indo-American Prehistory (1940), and Universal Constructivism (1944).

See alsoArt: The Twentieth Century .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Museum of Modern Art of Latin America (1985).

Additional Bibliography

Battegazzore, Miguel A. J. Torres Garcia: La trama y los signos. Montevideo: Impr. Gordon, 1999.

Braun, Barbara. Pre-Columbian Art and the Post-Columbian World: Ancient American Sources of Modern Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1993.

Fletcher, Valerie J. Crosscurrents of Modernism: Four Latin American Pioneers: Diego Rivera, Joaquín Torres-García, Wifredo Lam, Matta. Washington, DC: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in association with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.

Parada Soto, Ana Isabel. Joaquín Torres García: Un pintor neoplatónica del siglo XX. Mérida: Universidad de Los Andes, Consejo de Publicaciones, Vicerrectorado Académico, 2004.

                                 Amalia Cortina Aravena