Joaquín Torres-García

Joaquín Torres-García, the internationally renowned Uruguayan painter, muralist, sculptor, teacher, writer, and theoretician, is widely regarded as the father of Latin American modernism.

Biography of Joaquín Torres-García

Joaquín Torres-García was born in Montevideo to a Catalan father and a Uruguayan mother. His family relocated to his father’s homeland in Catalonia, Spain when he was seventeen. He wouldn't return to Montevideo until forty-three years later, in 1934, having lived abroad and traveled extensively in Spain, France, the USA, and Italy.

In Barcelona, at the turn of the twentieth century, he encountered fellow artists, writers, and intellectuals, including Pablo Picasso, Antoni Gaudí, and Joan Miró. Upon relocating to New York in 1920, Torres-García focused on designing manipulable, didactic wooden toys, briefly manufactured for sale. This was succeeded by a two-year stint in Italy, followed by a brief stay in Villefranche-sur-Mer. By then, Torres-García had explored movements like Cubism and Fauvism. However, during his time in Paris in 1926, amidst the peak of the Surrealist movement, he began experimenting with Constructivism.

A pivotal moment occurred when Torres-García met Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian, Georges Vantangerloo, and Michel Seuphor. With Seuphor, he co-founded the group and journal, Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square) in 1930, aiming to promote Constructivist and Abstract art.

Extremely prolific in his artwork, writings, and teachings, upon returning to Uruguay, Torres-García established La Escuela del Sur (The School of the South) in 1935, along with its accompanying magazine. He published his renowned manifesto alongside the first version of his seminal "Inverted Map" drawing. Through reversing geographic cartography and positioning Latin America autonomously at the top of the map, Torres-García conveyed the message: "Nuestro norte es el sur" ("Our North is the South"), a statement, challenging the dominant European artistic hierarchy of the time.

In 1943, the artist founded the renowned "Taller Torres-García" (TTG), where he passed on his teachings to the next generation of Southern Cone artists in Abstraction, perpetuating the profound legacy of his theories on Universal Constructivism, a pivotal movement in twentieth-century Latin American art.

Joaquín Torres-García's Art Style

Before returning to Uruguay, Joaquín Torres-García's artistic journey led him through various movements, culminating in Universal Constructivism. His earliest style emerged when his family relocated to Barcelona in 1892, where he developed a Classical style influenced by Mediterranean culture, creating murals and decorating churches.

By the time Torres-García returned to Montevideo in 1934, he had developed his concept of Universal Constructivism. Rooted in Classicism, Symbolism, Constructivism, Cubism, Neo-Platonism, and Surrealism, the movement aimed for a "universal" art form. Torres-García merged elements of European Abstraction with symbols from American indigenous art, incorporating pre-Columbian culture into his aesthetic, alongside his innovative use of the grid.

Rooted in his concept of Universal Constructivism, Torres-García aimed to establish an abstract art form with universal significance, communicated through a constructivist language native to the Americas.