
Installation view of Joaquín Torres-García: The Arcadian Modern at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (October 25, 2015–February 15, 2016). Photo: Jonathan Muzikar. © 2016 The Museum of Modern Art, New York
When Joaquín Torres-García returned to his native Uruguay in 1934, he was 60 years old and had lived abroad for more than 40 years. During the first years of his American relocation, before he became the referential Master at Taller Torres-García, he founded and directed the Asociación de Arte Constructivo, the achronym for which—AAC—appears signed on most of his paintings from 1935 to 1938. During these years Torres-García created a series of black-and-white abstract paintings that constitute one of the most striking repertoires of synthetic abstraction ever produced in the Americas. On view in MoMA’s sixth-floor galleries as part of the retrospective Joaquín Torres-García: The Arcadian Modern is a group of 10 paintings from this series, anchored by the monumental Estructura abstracta tubular (Abstract tubular structure) (1937) on loan from Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, Venezuela.

Joaquín Torres-García Estructura abstracta tubular (Abstract tubular structure). 1937. Mixed media on canvas, 46 1/4 x 78 3/4” (117.5 x 200 cm). Colección Fundación Museos Nacionales – Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas. © Sucesión Joaquín Torres-García, Montevideo 2015
This work, arguably the largest abstract painting ever made by Torres-García, has the dimensions and visual texture characteristic of a mural painting. Closer examination, however, reveals that the large canvas’ sandy surface is not due to the technique of fresco painting, (which Torres-García mastered since his early years as oficial painter of Catalonia’s Commonwealth) but rather to the use of mixed pictorial media that includes pigments, binder, and giesso. In collaboration with Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, and Fundación Museos Nacionales in Venezuela, MoMA’s painting conservator Anny Aviram organized a workshop focusing on the condition and restoration of this work. What they discovered made curators and collection specialists reconsider what was first deemed a fragile condition.

Detail of Joaquín Torres-García’s Estructura abstracta tubular (Abstract tubular structure). 1937. Colección Fundación Museos Nacionales – Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas. © Sucesión Joaquín Torres-García, Montevideo 2015
When Torres-García painted this work in 1937, he prepared his materials by mixing in the pigment and binder with giesso. The sandy texture of the latter wasn’t thoroughly mixed in before it was applied to the surface of the canvas. Instead, lumps in the material settled on the canvas as it was painted over. Shortly thereafter, as the painting dried, the air in these lumps popped and produced fractures on the pictorial surface. Conservation specialists refer to these incisions as “drying-cracks,” meaning that the rupture is not a consequence of possible degeneration in the condition of the painting, but rather a mark that is present since the work’s early stages.

Installation in progress of Joaquín Torres-García: The Arcadian Modern at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (October 25, 2015–February 15, 2016)

Installation view of Joaquín Torres-García: The Arcadian Modern at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (October 25, 2015–February 15, 2016). Photo: Jonathan Muzikar. © 2016 The Museum of Modern Art, New York