JOAQUÍN TORRES GARCIA

 

Post 218 -by Gautam Shah

SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture -by Gautam Shah

Joaquín Torres García (1874-1949) was a Uruguayan-Spanish artist. He began his art career at Catalunya, Spain. He was an artist, sculptor, muralist, novelist, writer, teacher, and theorist. Torres-García published ‘more than 150 books, essays and articles in Catalan, Spanish, French and English, and delivered more than 500 lectures’.

Torres-García's art encompasses many classical traditions and 20^th C ‘isms’ of the current period like Cubism, Dada, neo-plasticism, primitivism, surrealism, abstraction, etc.

Torres-Garcia and Picasso were contemporaries and friends. Both began their artistic lives in modern Barcelona. ‘His work evolved from classicism to Cubism, whereas, Picasso's work did the reverse’. During 1903 Torres-García collaborated with Antoni Gaudy on the stained-glass windows for the Palma Cathedral and the Sagrada Família. He also executed a large mural for the medieval Palau de la Generalitat de Catalunya.

Torres-García art is rich with metaphors to connect with old with new, classical with modernism, or figurative art versus the abstraction. His portraits are rich with abstracted emotions. His city street or marine vessels form an articulated chaos entwined in multiple layers. His architectural forms and the colour remained distinct entities.

He lived and worked in Spain, but was well in touch with the art scenes of Europe, United states and Uruguay, He was an erudite scholar who influenced European, and North American and South American modern art.

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