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Lot Essay
In late 1943, Torres-García was approached by the architects of a hospital being built for tubercular patients in Montevideo, to design thirty-four murals. For Torres-García and the artists of his workshop school (Taller Torres-García) this was a unique opportunity to achieve in practice his theory that Constructivism was the ideal style to incorporate into modern architecture.
The hospital was designed to create a pleasant environment for the patients, in addition to the murals throughout the building; it included a library and music room. Determined to secure the mural project for Torres-García, the physician-director and the architects intervened with the Ministry that approved the murals on the condition that the artists would not be paid.
Torres-García was then seventy years old and in failing health. Nonetheless, every day from May through the end of July 1944, an ambulance drove him and his students to the building site on the outskirts of Montevideo. He climbed the scaffolding braving the cold and damp winter to paint seven murals with enamel directly on the walls. Due to the work involved in the planning and execution of the project there are relatively few easel paintings by Torres-García of 1944.
The murals were unveiled on July 29th, in a public ceremony with the Minister of Public Health, physicians, and the artists in attendance. The art critics declared them violent and aggressive and cautioned that the strident colors, would disturb the sick who were in need of physical and spiritual repose. The debate for and against the murals that ensued in the press went on for months, to such an extent that eventually a humorous note was published declaring that the murals had "turned out to be more dangerous and lethal than the Koch bacilli."
By 1970, the seven murals by Torres-García were in danger of being lost, threatened by the deterioration of the building. The Torres-García Foundation funded their restoration; removed from the walls and transferred to canvas, they were donated to Montevideo's Museum of Visual Arts, where they were shown in a Torres-García centenary retrospective in 1974. The following year, together with a large selection of Constructivist works by Torres-García, the murals were exhibited in Paris. In July 1978, as part of the exhibition "Geometría Sensível" in Rio de Janeiro, 73 works by Torres-García including the seven murals were destroyed in the fire that also consumed the entire collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
This painting, Construcción, 1944 is Torres-García's study for El Sol, the largest mural (over twenty feet long) of the project. This work is valuable not only because it is a testimony to the scope of the Constructivist muralist movement, and of its irreparable loss, but also because of its sheer originality. Torres-García wrote that these paintings, which he defined as "concrete realism", were a new phase in modern art. By incorporating visual reality and the metaphysical-symbolic into a neoplasticist structure in primary colors, he achieved an overall view of the world. The large fish is out of scale in relation to the harbor scene below because it is an idea, the symbol for life. Torres-García expressed how in his paintings there are some things that reason cannot explain, " there is the fish, and a larger sign dominating everything. There is also a star, why? The spirit is a poet and one shouldn't question the poet."
This painting will be listed under n. P 1944.15 in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's oeuvre being prepared by Cecilia de Torres.
The hospital was designed to create a pleasant environment for the patients, in addition to the murals throughout the building; it included a library and music room. Determined to secure the mural project for Torres-García, the physician-director and the architects intervened with the Ministry that approved the murals on the condition that the artists would not be paid.
Torres-García was then seventy years old and in failing health. Nonetheless, every day from May through the end of July 1944, an ambulance drove him and his students to the building site on the outskirts of Montevideo. He climbed the scaffolding braving the cold and damp winter to paint seven murals with enamel directly on the walls. Due to the work involved in the planning and execution of the project there are relatively few easel paintings by Torres-García of 1944.
The murals were unveiled on July 29th, in a public ceremony with the Minister of Public Health, physicians, and the artists in attendance. The art critics declared them violent and aggressive and cautioned that the strident colors, would disturb the sick who were in need of physical and spiritual repose. The debate for and against the murals that ensued in the press went on for months, to such an extent that eventually a humorous note was published declaring that the murals had "turned out to be more dangerous and lethal than the Koch bacilli."
By 1970, the seven murals by Torres-García were in danger of being lost, threatened by the deterioration of the building. The Torres-García Foundation funded their restoration; removed from the walls and transferred to canvas, they were donated to Montevideo's Museum of Visual Arts, where they were shown in a Torres-García centenary retrospective in 1974. The following year, together with a large selection of Constructivist works by Torres-García, the murals were exhibited in Paris. In July 1978, as part of the exhibition "Geometría Sensível" in Rio de Janeiro, 73 works by Torres-García including the seven murals were destroyed in the fire that also consumed the entire collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
This painting, Construcción, 1944 is Torres-García's study for El Sol, the largest mural (over twenty feet long) of the project. This work is valuable not only because it is a testimony to the scope of the Constructivist muralist movement, and of its irreparable loss, but also because of its sheer originality. Torres-García wrote that these paintings, which he defined as "concrete realism", were a new phase in modern art. By incorporating visual reality and the metaphysical-symbolic into a neoplasticist structure in primary colors, he achieved an overall view of the world. The large fish is out of scale in relation to the harbor scene below because it is an idea, the symbol for life. Torres-García expressed how in his paintings there are some things that reason cannot explain, " there is the fish, and a larger sign dominating everything. There is also a star, why? The spirit is a poet and one shouldn't question the poet."
This painting will be listed under n. P 1944.15 in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's oeuvre being prepared by Cecilia de Torres.