TorresGarcía

Joaquín Torres-García, commonly known as Torres-García, was a Uruguayan artist, painter, sculptor and theorist who helped shape modern art in Latin America. He is best known for developing Constructive Universalism and for founding the Taller Torres-García in Montevideo, an influential atelier that educated a generation of artists in a synthesis of geometry, symbolism and South American imagery.

Torres-García was born in 1874 in Montevideo. He spent formative years in Uruguay before moving to Europe, where he encountered avant-garde currents in Barcelona and Paris. He returned to Uruguay in the mid-20th century and established the Taller Torres-García, which became a hub for artists exploring a universal language of signs and forms. He died in Montevideo in 1949.

In his work, Torres-García pursued Constructive Universalism, a theoretical program that sought to unite universal geometric principles with local cultural memory. He used a systematic visual vocabulary—geometric shapes, grids, and symbolic signs representing elements such as the sun, a tree, animals and letters—to create compositions that aimed to bridge European modernism with Latin American tradition. His practice encompassed painting, sculpture and public murals, often executed with clear outlines and flat color fields.

Legacy: The Taller Torres-García and its affiliated artists helped disseminate his ideas across Uruguay and beyond, contributing to the development of Latin American modernism. Torres-García’s synthesized language of form and symbol is regarded as a key point of reference in 20th-century Latin American art and continues to be studied in museums and academic contexts.