“Cubism has renewed all the arts,“ Joaquín Torres-García declared in 1944. “It is the art of our times.” Guitar, completed in 1924, attests to the artist’s longstanding engagement with Cubist works, techniques, and ideas. Assembled from pieces of roughly cut and painted wood, the work evokes earlier Cubist constructions, such as Pablo Picasso’s 1914 Guitar. Both Guitars feature everyday materials, contrasting perspectives, and flattened, geometric forms set in a shallow space. Yet Torres-García’s Guitar also reflects his own values.
In 1914, the artist began to produce handcrafted wooden toys intended to educate and entertain children. While Torres-García understood his toys and sculptures to be distinct, each relied on the basic shapes—in his words, “cylinders, cubes, pyramids”—that he considered the building blocks of modern art.
2026
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Joaquín Torres-García
Uruguayan, 1874–1949 13 works onlineThe Uruguayan-born artist Joaquín Torres García was 60 years old when he returned to his native country in 1934, after living abroad in Spain, France, Italy, and the United States for more than four decades.
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Estate of the artist; Horacio Torres; Estate of Horacio Torres; Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1981 [1].
[1] See de Torres, Cecilia and Susanna V. Temkin. "Guitarre, 1924 (1924.44)." Joaquín Torres-García Catalogue Raisonné. http://torresgarcia.com/catalogue/entry.php?id=521 (accessed December 3, 2015). Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, Invoice, December 8, 1981, in: collection files 433.1981, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
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