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Lot Essay
We are grateful to Mrs. Cecilia de Torres for her assistance in confirming the authenticity of this work; to be included in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné of the artist under archive number P1943.15.
Torres-García returned to Montevideo in 1934, over forty years after he had left the city of his birth and following a peripatetic path strung between Barcelona, Paris and New York. He worked tirelessly to catalyze the development of modern art throughout Latin America, opening a school (El Taller Torres-García) in 1944 and promoting a new, pan-American visual-arts tradition drawn from the recuperation of the pre-Hispanic past. The paintings from the final Montevidean period represent the culmination of Torres-García's career, in which he integrated the formal precepts of the modernist grid and the symbolic iconography of the ancient Americas.
Constructivo en cinco tonos harks back to Torres-García's encounter with Neo-Plasticism and his involvement with the Parisian abstractionists associated with the Cercle et Carré group. Like Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian, Torres-García defined his mature pictorial language around the grid, whose linear and spatial relationships posited the oppositional relationships of the cosmos-- male and female, material and spiritual, active and passive--in dynamic and creative equilibrium. Here, the use of the primary colors, along with white and black, and the (mostly) straight lines suggest both the enduring influence of Neo-Plasticism and Torres-García's innovations within its conceptual parameters. The rigorous structure of the grid is here broken down, each color block inscribed with schematic and suggestively pictographic forms; these juxtaposed grids-within-the-grid form a dynamic artistic environment, populated with what Torres-García believed to be the symbols of a universal and timeless art. The motifs intimate a rich array of references, ranging from the human figure to classic Inca masonry, and collectively project a vibrant composite image of cosmic order, unity and harmony.
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park.
Torres-García returned to Montevideo in 1934, over forty years after he had left the city of his birth and following a peripatetic path strung between Barcelona, Paris and New York. He worked tirelessly to catalyze the development of modern art throughout Latin America, opening a school (El Taller Torres-García) in 1944 and promoting a new, pan-American visual-arts tradition drawn from the recuperation of the pre-Hispanic past. The paintings from the final Montevidean period represent the culmination of Torres-García's career, in which he integrated the formal precepts of the modernist grid and the symbolic iconography of the ancient Americas.
Constructivo en cinco tonos harks back to Torres-García's encounter with Neo-Plasticism and his involvement with the Parisian abstractionists associated with the Cercle et Carré group. Like Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian, Torres-García defined his mature pictorial language around the grid, whose linear and spatial relationships posited the oppositional relationships of the cosmos-- male and female, material and spiritual, active and passive--in dynamic and creative equilibrium. Here, the use of the primary colors, along with white and black, and the (mostly) straight lines suggest both the enduring influence of Neo-Plasticism and Torres-García's innovations within its conceptual parameters. The rigorous structure of the grid is here broken down, each color block inscribed with schematic and suggestively pictographic forms; these juxtaposed grids-within-the-grid form a dynamic artistic environment, populated with what Torres-García believed to be the symbols of a universal and timeless art. The motifs intimate a rich array of references, ranging from the human figure to classic Inca masonry, and collectively project a vibrant composite image of cosmic order, unity and harmony.
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park.