Joaquín Torres García was an avant-garde Uruguayan artist who represented Modernism. His artworks accumulated the elements of Cubism and Constructivism having their own peculiarities.
In addition to painting, Torres García was also known as an author, art theorist and educator.
Background
Ethnicity:
Joaquín Torres García’s father, Joaquim Torras Fradera, was of a Catalan origin and the artist’s mother, Maria Garcia Pérez, came from Montevideo, Uruguay and had ancestors from Andalusia and Canary Islands.
Joaquín Torres García was born on July 28, 1874, in Montevideo, Uruguay. He was a son of Joaquim Torres Fradera, a small merchant, and María García Pérez. He had a brother Gaspar and a sister Inés.
Torres García spent his childhood in Montevideo. He decided to become a painter at an early age. When he was seventeen, the family relocated to his father’s hometown in Spain called Mataró. A year later, they moved to Barcelona.
Torres García was impressed by the traces of an ancient culture he found in the city. The picturesque views of Barcelona had an influence on his later art.
From an early age, Torres García developed an antipathy to the realism in art and tried to make paintings which created their own reality.
Education
Joaquín Torres García received his general education at home where he was educated by his mother. As a very observant boy, he discovered many basic things himself.
At the age of seventeen, Torres García attended the night drawing classes of the artist Josep Vinardell at the School of Fine Arts in Mataró, Spain. In 1892, he became a student of the similar school in Barcelona.
The young man combined the studies with the courses at the Baixas Academy. He also attended the Saint Lluc Artists Circle (Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc) and the avant-garde artist café Els Quatre Gats. It was then when he got acquainted with such artistic people as Pablo Picasso, Ricard Canals, Manolo Hugue, Joaquim Mir, Isidre Nonell, Julio Gonzalez and an architect Antoni Gaudí.
Career
Joaquín Torres García began his career as a book and magazine illustrator. After the graduation, the young artist sent his drawings to many important Spanish periodicals of the time. The perseverance was rewarded. Since 1897, he had collaborated with several magazines such as La Saeta, Barcelona Cómica (to 1899) and La Vanguardia magazine. The latter helped the young man to organize his first solo exhibitions at its gallery in 1897 and in 1900. A year later, Torres García’s artworks similar in style with the art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec were presented at Sala Parés art gallery.
The artist tried his hand as a muralist in 1903 accepting the commission from Antoni Gaudí to decorate the Cathedral of Santa Maria of Palma with stained-glass windows. The first project in the field was later followed by the murals for Church of San Agustin in Barcelona, Church of the Divina Pastora in Sarria and the house Torre del Campanar. The next exhibition of his works took place along with the Saint Lluc Artists Circle at Sala Parés in 1908. While there, he was noted by Eugeni d’Ors i Rovira, the founder of Noucentisme movement, as one of its representatives.
Two years later, Joaquín Torres García traveled to Brussels where he decorated the Uruguay pavilion at the Brussels International World Fair. He then moved to France where he visited friends, attended the art galleries and museums.
On his return to Spain, in 1911, he took part in the VI International Exhibition of Art in Barcelona with his Philosophy X Musa. The first canvases in the style of Cubism he had adopted in France were demonstrated at the Section d'Or exhibition held in Paris the following year. In 1913, he showed his canvases at the Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona.
The year became rich in events for the artist. Firstly, he started to work on the murals for the atrium of the Municipal Palace of Barcelona. Then, he founded the Escuela de Decoración (School of Decorative Arts) in Sarrià and published his debut book titled ‘Notes sobre Art’ (Notes on Art). It was followed by many others the following years.
Five years later, Joaquín Torres García debuted as a sculptor producing the first wood toys. The simple forms were placed into complex constructions that foreran his later Constructivist art. The toys were demonstrated to the public at the Galeries Dalmau in 1918 and the next year within the VI Exhibition of toys at the Industrial University of Barcelona. He pursued the toy project during his trip to New York City in 1920.
While in the Big Apple, the artist explored the modern style of art. The city full of skyscrapers influenced his works which became more geometric preserving however the expressionistic character. In 1922, the artist exhibited at the Whitney Studio Gallery and the Society of Independent Artists. This year, he left the city and moved to Italy where he had prepared his wood toys for sale for a couple of years. Then, Torres García relocated to France and settled down firstly in Villefranche-sur-Mer, and after in Paris.
In 1927, the artist participated at the group exhibition at the Montparnasse Art Gallery along with Stanislaw Eleszkievicz. By the end of the decade, Joaquín Torres García turned to Constructivism and became one of the most important developers of abstract movement. In 1930, he co-founded along with Piet Mondrian and Michel Seuphor the group ‘Cercle et Carré’ (Circle and Square) which allowed the abstract artists to share their ideas. After the exhibition of the group at the ’23 Gallery’, Torres García left the group the same year after some dissent with Seuphor. He concentrated on his wood toys and writings.
After the series of exhibitions at the beginning of the 1930s, Torres García left Paris and relocated to Madrid in 1932. The following year, he had a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art where he presented seventy canvases. The artist finished the work on his manuscript called ‘Constructive Art’. It was published two years later as a dedication to Piet Mondrian under the title ‘Estructura’ (Structure). To involve more young artists to the constructive art, Torres García read lectures on it and taught the history of art.
In 1934, the artist moved to Montevideo where he established an ‘Asociacíon de Arte Constructivo’ (Association of Constructive Art) and continued to work on his autobiography written from the third person. It was published three years later as ‘Historia de mi vida’ (Story of my life). One of his most important sculptures, ‘Monumento Cosmico’ (Cosmic Monument), was opened at Parque Rodó.
At the beginning of the next decade, he read the last of 500 lectures at the Association of Constructive Art. The next book of the artist called ‘Ciudad sin Nombre’ (A city with no name) appeared in 1942. The artist received a lot of requests to recommence his lectures and the following year, opened a school ‘Taller Torres Garcia’ (Torres Garcia Workshop).
During the last years of his life, Joaquín Torres García had a number of retrospectives. He also worked on mural frescoes, including these for the Hospital Saint Bois, and read lectures.
The last projects of Joaquín Torres García were the couple of exhibitions he curated, at Sidney Janis Gallery in New York City and at Pan American Union in Washington, D. C.
Joaquín Torres García was an accomplished artist who made a great contribution to the development of Constructivism in Europe and America, especially its South part. He managed to combine different styles of art, such as Cubism, Dada, Neo plasticism, Primitivism, Surrealism and Abstraction and create the notion of Universal Constructivism.
As one of the important representatives of the abstract art during the inter-war period, he co-founded the ‘Cercle et Carré’ (Circle and Square) group.
Torres García was a prolific art theorist. During his career, he produced more than one hundred and fifty books and essays in Catalan, Spanish, French and English. Among his pupils were such famous artists as Gonzalo Fonseca, José Gurvich, Alceu Ribeiro, Julio Alpuy and Lily Salvo among others.
To preserve the art of Torres García, the museum named after him was founded in Montevideo. His artworks can be also found in such permanent collections, as the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona, the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum and the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. The Palace of the Generalitat of Catalonia in Barcelona had a Joaquín Torres García Hall where shown the frescoes which the artist had made from 1912 to 1916 on the commission of then President of the Council and the Commonwealth of Catalonia, Enric Prat de la Riba.
In 2015, a painting by Torres García called ‘Composition Nord – Art Constructif’ was purchased at Christie's in New York City for $2,105,000.
Quotations:
"Our lives are in a way the sum of units. not only years but hours. I am approximately in my 367204th hour and the 367205th approaches with a new fragment of life, unlike the previous that will never reoccur. One has to live life with that sense of continuity: adding hours."
"The architectural, constructive sense of his [Torres García] painting produces a dissociation between drawing and color that remain as two separate entities, but in tone, color and line, and not in anything representative. These elements now will represent themselves; the whole aesthetic value of the work will reside in its free game."
Membership
Saint Lluc Artists Circle
,
Spain
Connections
Joaquín Torres García married a Catalan Manolita Piña Rubíes. She received the title of his ‘inseparable companion’ because she supported his artistic projects and accompanied her husband almost everywhere.
The family produced four children, two daughters Olimpia and Ifigenia, and two sons, Augusto and Horacio.
Father:
Joaquim Torras Fradera
Joaquín Torres García with his parents and his sister Inés.
Mother:
Maria Garcia Pérez
Spouse:
Manolita Pina Rubies
Joaquín Torres García with Manolita Pina Rubies.
Daughter:
Olimpia Torres
Torres García with his wife Manolita Pina Rubies and their three children, Ifigenia, Augusto and Olimpia.
Joaquín Torres-García: The Arcadian Modern
The richly illustrated publication presents Torres-García's long and wide-ranging career and includes drawings, paintings, objects, sculptures and rare manuscripts
The Worlds of Joaquín Torres-García
The book includes previously unpublished texts by the artist and iconic works that were kept by the family as representative examples of different moments in his career
