拍品专文
Hilton Kramer said, "with a defender like Torres-García, Mondrian needed no enemies." (1) He was referring to the dissatisfaction, eloquently expressed by Torres-García, who in spite of his friendship and immense respect for the Dutch master, felt that Mondrians' work led to a dead end. Torres-García was loath to forfeit the legacy of tradition and image, yet he valued the rational order of the grid.
This majestic painting, Peinture Constructive, is a triumph representing the successful integration of his characteristic symbols into a geometric grid based on the golden section. Torres-García used symbols to synthesize idea and form without narrative, which he felt would interfere with the unity of the work. He referred to this consolidation of idea and form as "the nexus between the vital (or living) and the abstract." By inserting a symbol representing humanistic values into the structure of neoplasticism (which was devoid of human references), Torres-García succeeded in creating a style that became a major force in modern art. He called it Constructive Universalism.
In Peinture Constructive, the prominent use of rich earth-red pigment reveals his love for the painterly qualities of the medium. "Rojo Pozzuoli" as he liked to call it (from the place near Naples where it was originally produced) is applied on this canvas in a variety of ways; as the outline of the fish, the plum and the man, as shading within the forms and in the background. Red accents dominate, sustaining the plane of the picture on the surface.
As Lawrence Alloway explains, signs are a determinant factor in avoiding a singular focus within a painting. "Sign language, as Torres-García and Klee showed, combined an eloquent power of making references with a profound respect for the picture surface (that constituent fact); sign language was in fact, a semantics of the surface, close to the wall".(2) In Peinture Constructive, by dividing the symbols within the compartments with lines, Torres-García did not allow them to be mere passive receptacles of meaning, they become integral with the grid itself, creating an all over geometric pattern.
Cecilia de Torres
New York, March 1997
(1) H. Kramer, The New York Times, Scenario of Exile: Torres-García, March 10, 1971
(2) L. Alloway, Art International, The New American Painting, Volume III/3-4, 1959, pp. 21-29
This painting will be listed under N.P. 1931.16 in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist being prepared by Cecilia de Torres
This majestic painting, Peinture Constructive, is a triumph representing the successful integration of his characteristic symbols into a geometric grid based on the golden section. Torres-García used symbols to synthesize idea and form without narrative, which he felt would interfere with the unity of the work. He referred to this consolidation of idea and form as "the nexus between the vital (or living) and the abstract." By inserting a symbol representing humanistic values into the structure of neoplasticism (which was devoid of human references), Torres-García succeeded in creating a style that became a major force in modern art. He called it Constructive Universalism.
In Peinture Constructive, the prominent use of rich earth-red pigment reveals his love for the painterly qualities of the medium. "Rojo Pozzuoli" as he liked to call it (from the place near Naples where it was originally produced) is applied on this canvas in a variety of ways; as the outline of the fish, the plum and the man, as shading within the forms and in the background. Red accents dominate, sustaining the plane of the picture on the surface.
As Lawrence Alloway explains, signs are a determinant factor in avoiding a singular focus within a painting. "Sign language, as Torres-García and Klee showed, combined an eloquent power of making references with a profound respect for the picture surface (that constituent fact); sign language was in fact, a semantics of the surface, close to the wall".(2) In Peinture Constructive, by dividing the symbols within the compartments with lines, Torres-García did not allow them to be mere passive receptacles of meaning, they become integral with the grid itself, creating an all over geometric pattern.
Cecilia de Torres
New York, March 1997
(1) H. Kramer, The New York Times, Scenario of Exile: Torres-García, March 10, 1971
(2) L. Alloway, Art International, The New American Painting, Volume III/3-4, 1959, pp. 21-29
This painting will be listed under N.P. 1931.16 in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist being prepared by Cecilia de Torres