Joaquín Torres García

JOAQUÍN TORRES GARCÍA (Montevideo, Uruguay, 1874 - 1949).
"Landscape of Florence", 1945.
Oil on canvas.
Signed with initials and dated in the lower margin.
Provenance: -Palatina Gallery, Buenos Aires, 1978. -Purchased at Sotheby's New York, May 2008.
Work included in the Catalogue Raisonné by Cecilia de Torres (nº 1945.09).
Measurements: 68,5 x 52,4 cm; 102 x 86 cm (frame).
This is a late work by Torres García. The painter had already explored numerous languages and inaugurated styles and movements which would be key to the 20th century. In this view of a Florentine street, we are no longer faced with the reduction of reality to abstract planes, but the free brushstrokes plunge us once again into a figurative scene, but the language is highly synthetic. The swarming urban agitation denotes the wisdom of a pulse, of a hand, which has travelled a long and daring road.
After beginning his training as a self-taught artist, in 1890 Torres García decided to emigrate in order to train as a painter. He travelled to Europe with his family the following year, at the age of seventeen. In 1892 he settled in Barcelona and enrolled at the School of Fine Arts. There he came into contact with French impressionism, the main influence at that time on him and other famous pupils, such as Mir, Sunyer, Canals and Nonell. In 1901 he began to paint in fresco, attracted by the timeless spirit of the ancient works executed in this technique, and entered into a dynamic of group work in which painters, musicians, sculptors and poets collaborated. Around 1910 he began to introduce formal elements typical of Catalonia into his work, imbued with the spirit of vindication of the Catalan identity of the time. Several official commissions are related to this new approach, among which the mural decoration of the Salón de Sant Jordi at the headquarters of the Diputación Provincial de Barcelona was a turning point in his career. In 1920 he moved to New York and came into contact with artists of the stature of Max Weber, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp. Shortly afterwards he returned to Europe and settled in Paris, where he frequented the meetings of the group led by Mondrian, thus coming closer to abstraction and constructivism. In 1934 he finally decided to return to Montevideo, where he was received as a member of the European artistic elite. There he founded the Sociedad de las Artes del Uruguay, whose aim was to integrate all the arts and act as a link between artists and the public.

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