Introduction
Joaquín Torres García (28 July 1874 – 8 August 1949) was a Spanish Uruguayan artist painter, sculptor, muralist, novelist, writer, teacher and theorist, active in Spain, United States, Italy, France and Uruguay. Torres Garcia was an avant gardist whose influence encompasses European, American and South American modern art. He dealt the eternal dilemma between the old and the modern, the classical and the avant-garde, reason and feeling, figuration and abstraction with a simple and brilliant metaphor: there is no contradiction or incompatibility. The same brush strokes serve for a primitive composition or for a mural of Renaissance inspiration. Like Goethe, he seeks the integration between classicism and modernity.He is known for his collaboration with Gaudi in 1903 on the stained glass windows for the Palma Cathedral and the Sagrada Família. He decorated with monumental frescoes the medieval Palau de la Generalitat seat of the Catalan government. His art is associated with archaic universal cultures; Mediterranean cultural traditions, Noucentisme, and Modern Classicism. From 1920 he developed a unique style, encompassing Cubism, Dada, Neo plasticism, Primitivisme, Surrealism, Abstraction and coined the term Universal Constructivism. As a theoretician he published more than one hundred and fifty books, essays and articles written in Catalan, Spanish, French, English; "admirable treaties on aesthetics and avant-garde literature." In his lifetime he gave more than 500 lectures. An indefatigable teacher who founded several art schools one in Spain and another in Montevideo and numerous art groups including the first European abstract art group and magazine Cercle et Carré (Circle and square) in Paris in 1929. Among the many artists that have called him "Maestro" (teacher) are Joan Miró, Helion, Pere Daura, Engel Rozier. Retrospectives in Paris in 1955 and Amsterdam in 1961 are the earliest to document historically the place of Torres-García in the currents of abstract art. In the United States he had important exhibitions in the 1920s, in the 1930s at Gallatin's Gallery of Living Art as a master of the European Modern Art with Arp, Braque, Gris, Picasso. Sidney Janis Gallery and Rose Fried Gallery sponsored important shows from the 1950s.
Wikidata
Q520713
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Nationalities
Uruguayan, Central American, South American, Spanish
Gender
Male
Roles
Artist, Fresco Painter, Teacher, Muralist, Painter, Toymaker, Theorist
Names
Joaquín Torres-García, Joaquin Torres Garcia, Joaquin Torres-Garcia, Joaquín García, Joaquim Torres-García, Joaquim García, Joaquín Torres- García, J. Torres-García, Joaquím Torres-García, Joaquím Torres- García, Torres-Garcia
Ulan
500031259
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Information from Getty’s Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License