In some ways Uruguayan-Spanish artist Joaquín Torres-García (1874 – 1949) eludes categorization, since he himself refused to remain within one artistic tradition or school. However, he synthesized the art techniques and philosophies he came into contact with, seeking to integrate the classical and the archaic with the avant-garde — Cubism, Dada, Futurism, neo-plasticism, primitivism, surrealism, and abstraction — and created what we now refer to as Universal Constructivism.
Torres-García lived more than half his life away from his native home. Born in Uruguay and spending his childhood there, his family moved to Spain when he was 15 years old. He briefly attended formal art education in Barcelona, but soon dropped it in favor of independent studies. While in Barcelona he worked as an illustrator (books and posters and magazines), he painted decorative murals using traditional fresco techniques, he wrote about art, he collaborated with Gaudí creating stained glass for the Cathedral of Palma de Mallorca and the Sagrada Familia, he taught art and lectured, married and had children, and he put up exhibitions and grew quite noted as an artist. Still, in the end, he felt marginalized in the Catalan art scene, and in 1920 he decided to move his family to New York. He admired skyscrapers as the epitome of modernism — the French painter Francis Picabia once described New York as a “cubist, futurist city” — and Torres-García was perhaps also inspired by the likes of Duchamp who declared America “the country of the art of the future.” In addition to exhibiting his art, Torres-García started a business making children’s toys (a business he had already attempted to start in Spain, and failed). However, the stay in New York was brief, and soon it was back to Europe: along with his family he now lived the next 6 years in Paris. And then, at the age of 60 he returned to Uruguay — for the first time since his childhood — and stayed there the last 15 years of his life.
Having returned to Uruguay, Torres-García founded Taller Torres García, which was an art school but also an organization with a goal to help young artists (a bit akin to a medieval craft guild, but also inspired by the likes of Black Mountain College and Bauhaus and De Stijl). One goal was to break the structures of hierarchies between design, craft and art. But there was also another ambition: to enkindle and boost a truly Latin American art, to create art that reflects it’s own place in history and region. The workshop organized exhibitions and published their own magazine — Removedor — through which they would spread knowledge of Torres-García’s body of work and ideas. Between 1944 and 1953 Removedor released 28 issues. Joaquín Torres-García wrote many of the articles, but he was not part of the editorial board.
While living in Europe Torres had crossed paths with artists like Gaudí, Max Ernst, Miro, Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Piete Mondrian, and Theo van Doesburg. And so, inspired by all the movements and styles these artists represented, his studies of classic Western art, and his explorations of Pre-Colombian art, he developed his Universal Constructivism. Through combining basic geometric structures with ancient iconography and modern ideograms, he sought to create order, harmony, and unity, and art that would be universally recognisible and meaningful. He often worked with ruler and compass, constructing forms and shapes that payed attention to mathematical linear equations and spatial relationships, adhering to the ancient principles of the golden ratio.
For the most part, I would assume Torres-García’s philosophy was shaped by a sense of standing on the outside: As an Uruguayan in Europe, as a Spaniard and Latino in the USA — but presumably also in Uruguay when he returned after 40 years away — I think he must have felt like an observer passing through. And maybe this detachment, this impartiality, allowed him to avoid getting caught up in one particular movement or philosophy, but instead gave him liberty to soak up inspiration from all he came in touch with and then use whichever part of what he found. At the same time it’s hard to believe he would have felt detached, that he felt like an outsider: he showed his work, both in solo exhibitions and group exhibitions, with great frequency, and he taught extensively and founded art schools in many of the places he lived. Between 1934 and 1940 he gave 500 lectures. He was, in other words, very involved everywhere he went.
Sources:
- Pérez-Oramas, Luis, Alexander Alberro, Sergio Chejfec, Estrella de Diego, and Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães. Joaquín Torres-García: The Arcadian Modern. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2015.