Joaquín Torres-García
- Introduction
- Joaquín Torres García (28 July 1874 – 8 August 1949) was an Uruguayan / Spanish artist ("l'artista uruguaianocatalà Joaquim Torres Garcia"), was born in Montevideo, Uruguay on July 28, 1874. As an adolescent he emigrated to Catalunya, Spain,where he initiated his career as an artist in 1891. For the next three decades, he embraced Catalan identity leading Barcelona’s and Europe's art and culture to its utmost vanguards. A ‘renaissance or universal man’; painter, sculptor, muralist, novelist, writer, teacher and theorist. He was also active in United States, Italy, France and Uruguay from where his influence encompasses a personal presence in European, North 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. 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. He developed a unique style first described as ‘Art Constructif’ while living in Paris’ 1930's. Arte Constructivo (Constructive Art), a school he opened in Madrid, will be continued as Universalismo Constructivo (Universal Constructivism), a treaty he published in South-America while teaching through his workshop schools “Asociación de Arte Constructivo” (Constructive Art Association) and ‘El Taller Torres-Garcia’. A unique style encompassing classic/archaic traditions with XX century's isms: Cubism, Dada, Neo plasticism, Primitivisme, Surrealism, Abstraction. As a theoretician he published more than one hundred and fifty books, essays and articles written in Catalan, Spanish, French, English. In his lifetime he gave more than 500 lectures. An indefatigable teacher, Torres founded several art schools in Spain and Montevideo and numerous art groups including the first European abstract art group and magazine Cercle et Carré (circle and square) in Paris in 1929. 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 exhibited in New York's 1920s when the Whitney Studio Club, The Society of Independent artists and the Societe Anonyme were giving their first steps. In the 1930s Albert Eugene Gallatin exhibited his work in the Museum of Living Art with Modern masters; Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger, etc. The Museum of Modern Art opened its Latin American collection exhibition in the 1940s with the acquisition of his works. Sidney Janis and Rose Fried Galleries sponsored important shows from the 1950s. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opened a retrospective exhibition in 1970's. Recent retrospectives in The Museum of Modern Art (2015) and Acquavella Galleries (2018), exhibited his art from a contemporary perspective.
- Wikidata
- Q520713
- 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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Read a short essay about the seminar A Flâneur in Montevideo: Joaquín Torres-García´s "La ciudad sin nombre" at the post
website -
Read a short essay about the seminar Growing Up With Style at the post
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Read a short essay about Joaquín Torres-García at the post
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Read a short essay about Joaquín Torres-García at the post website (part
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Read a short essay about Joaquín Torres-García at the post website (part
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Read a short essay about Joaquín Torres-García at the post website (part
3)
Exhibitions
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509: New York City, 1920s
Ongoing
MoMA
Collection gallery
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512: Circle and Square, Joaquin Torres-Garcia and Piet Mondrian
Ongoing
MoMA
Collection gallery
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Sur moderno: Journeys of Abstraction—The Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift
May 28–Sep 12, 2020
MoMA
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Lincoln Kirstein’s Modern
Mar 17–Jun 15, 2019
MoMA
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Joaquín Torres-García: The Arcadian Modern
Oct 25, 2015–Feb 15, 2016
MoMA
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Joaquín Torres-García has
31 exhibitionsonline.
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Joaquín Torres-García Street Scene New York 1920-22
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Joaquín Torres-García Guitar 1924
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Joaquín Torres-García Untitled (Figures) 1927
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Joaquín Torres-García Color Structure 1930
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Joaquín Torres-García Composition 1931
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Joaquín Torres-García Construction with Curved Forms 1931
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Joaquín Torres-García Composition 1932
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Joaquín Torres-García Composition 1932
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Jean (Hans) Arp, Alexander Calder, Giorgio de Chirico, Hans Erni, Max Ernst, Justino Fernández, Alberto Giacometti, Julio González, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika, Jean Hélion, Vasily Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, Jacques Lipchitz, Alberto Magnelli, Joan Miró, Ben Nicholson, Amédée Ozenfant, Pablo Picasso, Kurt Seligmann, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Joaquín Torres-García, Gérard Vulliamy, Ossip Zadkine, Various Artists 23 Gravures 1930–35, published 1935
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Joaquín Torres-García Plate (folio 45) from 23 Gravures 1934, published 1935
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Joaquín Torres-García Construction in White and Black 1938
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Joaquín Torres-García Portrait of Wagner 1940
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Joaquín Torres-García The Port 1942
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