Joaquin Torres-Garcia and Universal Constructivism, Presented by Cecilia de Torres

Spanish-Uruguayan artist, theorist and art educator Joaquin Torres-García (1874-1949) is renowned for his trademark abstract style of Universal Constructivism based on grid structure and symbolic motifs. After being active in Europe for years, he returned to his native Montevideo, Uruguay in 1934, where he established the Taller Torres-Garcia, an art workshop that proposed a new constructivist art centered on geometry with roots in ancient American arts and architecture. De Torres and his followers’ paintings are well represented in the Stanley and Pearl Goodman Collection of Latin American Art, which is a generous bequest to the Museum. The lecture coincides with the exhibition: Selections from the Stanley and Pearl Goodman Collection of Latin American Art, from September 21 to October 20.

Cecilia de Torres is internationally recognized as the leading authority on the work of Joaquín Torres-García and the artists associated with his Workshop, The Taller Torres-García (TTG). Ms. de Torres established her gallery in New York in 1993, after co-curating the exhibition El Taller Torres-García: The School of the South and Its Legacy (1991-1993), with Mari Carmen Ramírez. The exhibition was inaugurated at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid and was accompanied by an exhibition catalogue.

Throughout the years, the Cecilia de Torres, Ltd.’s exhibitions have aimed to bring about a new appreciation and understanding of Latin American modern and contemporary art. This pertains, most specifically, to the movements of Constructivism and Geometric Abstraction, and spans across media that includes painting, drawing, sculpture, kinetic art, and ceramics.

Ms. de Torres has also curated and contributed to numerous museum exhibitions, writes extensively on Torres-García and the artists of the TTG, and is regularly consulted by museums and auction houses regarding this work. In May 2015, following forty years of research, Cecilia de Torres published the online catalogue raisonné of Joaquín Torres-García, available to the public at www.torresgarcia.com.

The Annual Stanley and Pearl Goodman Lecture in Latin American Art is named in recognition of the couples’ generous promised gift to NSU Art Museum of over 90 works by Latin American artists.

Image: Joaquin Torres-Garcia, Gare II (Railway Station II), 1931. NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale; promised gift of Pearl and Stanley Goodman.