Joaquín Torres-García

Estate of the artist

Manolita Piña de Torres-Garcia, Montevideo (the artist's widow; acquired from the above)

Galería Palatina, Buenos Aires

Private Collection, Buenos Aires

Sale: Christie’s, New York, 28th May 1997, lot 17 

Purchased at the above sale by the present owner
 

Austin, The University of Texas at Austin, Archer M. Huntington Galleries; Caracas, Fundación Museo de Arte Contemporáneo & Lima, Galería INC, Museo de Arte Italiano, Joaquín Torres-García, 1874-1949: Chronology and Catalogue of the Family Collection, 1974-75, no. 68, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Buenos Aires, Galería Palatina, Joaquín Torres García, 1977, no. 2, illustrated in colour the catalogue

Buenos Aires, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Seis Maestros de la Pintura Uruguaya, 1987, no. 79, illustrated in the catalogue

Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía & Valencia, Institut Valencià d'Art Modern, J. Torres-García, 1991, no. 75, illustrated in the catalogue

Amsterdam, Institute of Contemporary Art, The Antagonistic Link: Joaquín Torres-García / Theo van Doesburg, 1992, no. 92, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

São Paulo, XXII Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, Joaquín Torres-García, 1994, no. 17, illustrated in the catalogue

Austin, The Blanton Museum of Art & New York, Grey Art Gallery, The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collections, 2007

Santiago de los Caballeros, Centro Cultural Eduardo León Jimenes, ¿Qué es el arte moderno para ti?, 2011

Porto Alegre, Ibere Camargo Foundation & São Paulo, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Joaquín Torres García: geometría, criação, proporção, 2011-12, illustrated in the catalogue

Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, La invención concreta: Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, 2013, illustrated in the catalogue

London, Royal Academy of Arts, Radical Geometry: Modern Art of South America from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, 2014, no. 2, illustrated in the catalogue

Aldo Galli, 'Panorama Semanal de Artes Plásticas', in La Prensa, Buenos Aires, 27th August 1977, illustrated in colour

'Guía de Exposiciones', in Clarín, Buenos Aires, 8th September 1977, illustrated

Thelia Conrad de Behar, 'New Renaissance Blooms', in Buenos Aires Herald, 8th September 1977, illustrated in colour

Romualdo Brughetti, 'Joaquín Torres-García: El hombre en el artista', in Artes Plásticas, no. 18, Buenos Aires, October 1978, illustrated in colour p. 46

Adolfo M. Maslach, Joaquín Torres-García: sol y luna del arcano, Caracas, 1998, no. 185, detail illustrated p. 350

Fernando Garcia, 'Mario Gradowczyk sobre Torres García: "Torres quería ser Picasso"', in El País, Montevideo, 21st September 2007, illustrated in colour

Mario H. Gradowczyk, Torres-García: Utopía y Transgresión, Montevideo, 2007, no. 6.9, illustrated in colour p. 182

Agustin Sanchez Vidal, Joaquín Torres-García, Madrid, 2012, illustrated in colour p. 56

This work is included in the Joaquín Torres-Garcia Online Catalogue Raisonné (www.torresgarcia.com) as no. 1931.16 (estate: 351).

Born in Montevideo, Uruguay to a Catalan father and a Uruguayan mother, Joaquín Torres-García’s career would span both the Americas and Europe. In his late teens his family moved to Barcelona where Torres-García enrolled in art school and frequented Els Quatre Gats with other artists including the González brothers and Pablo Picasso. While González and Picasso would leave for Paris in the late 1890s, Torres-García remained in and around Barcelona working with Antonio Gaudí on the Sagrada Familia Cathedral and receiving commissions from prominent members of Spanish society for murals and paintings. After moving to New York in 1920-22, Italy in 1922-24 and Villefranche-sur-Mer in 1925-26, Torres-García arrived in Paris with his family in the autumn of 1926. ‘The impact of Paris on Torres-García’s development was immense. It was in Paris, where he remained until 1932, that he discovered what it meant to be an artist […]. It took him only two years to develop both the ideas and the imagery of what he would come to call ‘Universal Constructivism’ […]. The paintings after 1929 are characterized by a measured gridded structure representative of an invisible metaphysical order, and schematic images or signs, evocative of the abstract idea of objects, the two combined to constitute a total world view’ (Margit Rowell in Torres-García, Grid-Pattern-Sign, Paris-Montevideo 1924-1944 (exhibition catalogue), Hayward Gallery, London, 1985-86, p.  11).

Peinture constructive was painted in 1931 and belongs to this very fertile period when the vast amount of work, theory, study and movement from the past decades crystalised into an overall structure that would frame Torres-García’s future work. While living in Paris in 1929, together with Michel Seuphor he founded ‘Circle et carré’, a group of abstract artists that published a journal of the same name. The group organised a seminal exhibition of Constructivist art which opened at Galerie 23 in Paris in April 1930, and included works by Arp, Kandinsky, Le Corbusier, Léger, Mondrian, Ozenfant, Schwitters and Torres-García, among others. The present work, alongside others from the early 1930s, shows the important influence of Constructivist art on Torres-García’s painting. He did not abandon figurative form, but instead represented his repertoire of images and symbols – such as the sun, anchor, star, boat, building and fish in the present composition - within a prominently geometrical grid-like structure.

Margit Rowell closely examines the structure of his post-1928 works: ‘In 1929, under the influence of his Parisian entourage, he began to rethink his work in terms of the Golden Section. Throughout the ensuing years his process was to trace a horizontal/vertical grid on the surface of the canvas, the dimensions dictated by the size of the stretcher. The format of the canvas represented the initial module from which all other modules derived in progressive (and decreasing) order. The resulting intersecting structure expressed a universal cosmic order (such as Van Doesburg and Mondrian [fig. 2] had found before him) and the order of human reason. Next he would distribute on the picture surface schematic figures or objects, which stood as symbols for specific humanistic notions (hope, love, justice for example). Finally he determined his palette, creating a pattern of coloured planes in the early works, but later adopting a single colour that unified the surface. By 1930-31, Torres-García’s repertoire of symbols was fairly well defined and included precise references to the cosmos (the sun), the ideal pentameter (the number five), human emotions (the heart and the anchor, representing hope), nature (the fish) […]. The paintings of 1931 also contain familiar references to a modern context (boats, clocks, motors, skyscrapers) and generalized symbols of the world of nature (leaves, snails, fish)’ (ibid., p. 16).

Torres-García wrote to the Spanish writer Guillermo de Torre in 1931 about his work at the time: ‘Someday when I’m able, I will let you know what I’ve been working on recently, through photographs or some other means. It’s a matter of style that I might call cathedral. Something quite strong, quite mature (a synthesis of all my work), quite proper, in a constructive sense, and even better, it’s something new because, as [Jacques] Liptchitz [sic.] says, it is the most ancient prehistory’ (quoted in Joaquín Torres-García, The Arcadian Modern (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Espacio Fundación Telefónica, Madrid & Museo Picasso, Málaga, 2016-17, p. 29). By 1932 the effects of the Great Depression in the United States were also keenly felt in Paris. Unable to sell his work in this extremely constricted market, Torres-García moved first to Madrid to teach and then, in short order, he returned to his birthplace in Uruguay following an absence of over forty years.