TORRES-GARCÍA. OUR NORTH IS THE SOUTH: BARCELONA
Joaquín Torres-García (Montevideo, 1874-1949) —painter, sculptor, writer, theorist and teacher— is recognized worldwide as a canonical figure of modern art. He was the first to link the principles of European Constructivism and Geometric Abstraction to pre-Columbian art, a completely innovative and original approach at the time. Torres-García contributed hugely to the aesthetic and mental decolonization, as regards artistic influences and tastes, of Latin America.
This is the first monographic exhibition devoted to him by the Mayoral gallery, displaying a selection of 18 pieces, including oil paintings, drawings and toys, produced between 1917 and 1937.
In 1936, Joaquín Torres-García introduced the metaphorical image
of an upturned America into the manuscript of one of his papers in
the journal Círculo y Cuadrado (a continuation of the publication
Cercle et Carré, which he founded in Paris in 1930), in which he
presented the outline of the continent upside down: the south in
the north and north in the south, and Uruguay –his home country–
appeared in the centre crossed by a line. The artist wanted to call
into question the orientation of the vanguards toward the north,
that is to say with Europe and the United States as benchmarks.
His north, also understood as Utopia, had to be the geographic
south. Torres-García’s theory has been considered by critics as the
beginning of the aesthetic decolonization process that took place
globally: “The countries of Latin America were already independent
but, as has often been argued, the ‘coloniality of power’ survived”
(Quijano 20201).
Torres-García pointed out the need to think about the consequences
of having been colonies of the Iberian monarchies for centuries and,
later, of having been under the hegemony of the United States. This
anti-hegemonic approach involving cultural revalorization is framed
in the Escuela del Sur (School of the South), which sought freedom
from European influence through the development of its own
aesthetics, based on the Global South countries’ experiences and
traditions (García, 20102).
Before returning to Montevideo, Torres-García developed his artistic
practice in cities such as Barcelona, Paris, New York and Madrid.
This exhibition displays drawings which reflect the huge influence
of the time he spent in New York, where he lived from 1920 to 1922,
during which he established the structural matrix of his Constructivist
compositions of the 1930s. In the drawing Nueva York (New York)
(1929), we observe how elements of the urban landscape structure
the composition. Indeed, the structural format of the reticle permits
him to balance the vertical and horizontal elements, to frame their
symbols in a geometric grid based on the golden ratio creating
compositions in which the lines, the geometry and the colour are
represented in perfect harmony.
The artist’s aim to promote toy production, and at the same time
formal research in this field, was a fundamental reason for travelling
to New York. As Luis Pérez-Oramas mentioned in the article in the
catalogue published by the MoMA (2016), “His toys were figures
of infancy made by an artist fascinated by the infancy of forms. They
also marked the infancy of his sculptural practice, and as such would
lead to a number of similarly anthropomorphic works”. In short, toys
such as those displayed here already expressed the primal schematic
representation of his language.
His production goes from the end of the 19th to the mid-20th century,
Torres-García’s painting thus evolving from Mediterranean Classicism
to periods of Vibrationism, Cubism and Fauvism. We display several
pieces from 1928, such as the oils on canvas Personatges (Characters)
and Café de París (Paris Café), the city in which he began to express his
different way of doing things. We should also highlight that La Feria
(The Fair) (1917) formed part of the retrospective exhibition devoted to
him by the MoMA in 2016, as well as having been displayed in prestigious
exhibitions of museums such as the MNCARS, the Picasso Museum
and the Fundación Joan Miró in Barcelona, among others.
Torres-García was deeply convinced that art and life were the same
thing and, therefore, both Constructive Universalism and the
Escuela del Sur transcended the boundaries of purely aesthetic
theory and had a significant impact on the development of modern
art in Latin America and the rest of the world.
1. Quijano, Aníbal (2020): “Colonialidad del poder, eurocentrismo y América
Latina”. In: Quijano, Aníbal: Cuestiones y horizontes: de la dependencia
histórico-estructural a la colonialidad/descolonialidad del poder. Buenos Aires:
Biblioteca CLACSO, pp. 91-146.
2. García, G. (2010). Joaquín Torres García: El sur y la vanguardia. Fondo de
Cultura Económica.
