Joaquin Torres Garcia

1874–1900

Joaquín Torres-García was born in Montevideo, Uruguay on 28 July 1874. He was the first child of Joaquim Torras Fradera (son of Joan Torras and Rosa Fradera), an emigrant from Mataró, Spain, and María García Pérez (daughter of José María García, from the Canary Islands, and Misia Rufina Pérez, Uruguayan). Eric Jardi termed him a "Uruguayan-Catalan artist, not only for being the son of a Mataronés but because he lived in Catalunya from the age of seventeen until he was forty-six, acquiring from the land of his father his strong artistic training, and dedicated to it an important sector of his work. He was one of the most notable personalities of artistic movement in the first half of the century. In 1861, Joaquim Torras Fradera traveled in a brigantine to make his fortune in South America, and established a general store called the Almacen de Joaquín Torres. As a child, Torres "examined the picturesque store situated in the old Square of the Wagons, the arrival point of the raw material of the country for export to Europe. The colonial Montevideo had a port, trains, and a vibrant population dotted with countless gauchos wrapped in capes with whip ready in hand." "Much of his early education in that predominantly agricultural society came from his observation of the things around him ... He received his first formal art training when his family returned to Spain"

In 1891, Torres-García's father returned to Mataró, Spain, with his wife and three children. He began studying with a local painter he soon showed a strong vocation. The family soon moved to Barcelona. Torres-Garcia enrolled in the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona (Escuela de Bellas Artes de Barcelona), the Baixas Academy (Academia Baixas) and the Saint Lluc Artists Circle. "Torres-García and Picasso were contemporaries. Both began their artistic lives in modern Barcelona and although their artistic interests were diverse, they focused their attention on the representation of 'modern life' in both its typical and anecdotal aspects. This was a world of fashionable young ladies, prosperous bourgeoisie, Bohemian writers, picturesque actors, ragged and amusing artists and so on, whose privileged epicenter was the cafe Els Quatre Gats, an establishment maintained in the style of Parisian cabarets. The most appropriate medium in which to depict that world was the print, a drawing intended, in many cases, to be reproduced in the illustrated magazines of the time. The language came from Paris; the favorite models were Toulouse-Lautrec and Steinlen.". His classmates and friends included Ricard Canals, Manolo Hugue, Joaquim Mir, Isidre Nonell, Pablo Picasso, and Julio Gonzalez. Torres was an assiduous contributor of drawings in all the principal newspapers and magazines of the time, such as La Vanguardia, Iris, Barcelona Cómica and La Saeta.

In 1900, Torres Garcia's father died.

1901–1909

Miguel Utrillo wrote an article titled "Joaquin Torres-Garcia, Decorator" in Pel i Pluma, published with a portrait by Ramon Casas, photographs of several paintings by Torres — one on the cover of the magazine — and his first article, called "Impressions".

Antoni Gaudí commissioned Torres in 1903 to create stained-glass windows for Palma Cathedral. "One of the key events in his career was his intervention (between 1902 and 1905) in the High Altar of the Cathedral of Palma de Majorca, a masterpiece of Spanish Gothic, for which he made the lateral stained glass windows and the small rose window in the apse. His interpretation, of the Marian symbols carved in a stone placed above the cathedral's main entrance from the Song of Songs — in the words of Baltasar Coll Tomas — is one of the many dialogues proposed by Torres. Whereas approached from a symbolic/thematic perspective or from a universal stance, these symbols, along with the geometrical composition used by the medieval master masons, will be reinterpreted in every stage of Torres's long career: the sun, the moon, the star, the well, the garden, the tower, the temple. The spiritual realm, reason, feelings, the natural or earthly realm, immediate, intermediate, remote; past, present, future."

Eugeni d'Ors, the intellectual father (and inventor of the term) noucentisme, praised artworks that Torres Garcia shows at Sala Parés and the Cercle de Sant Lluc that same year. Later will write the prologue to Torres' show in the Galeries Dalmau in 1912 and includes frequent references of Torres's work in La Ben Plantada, the book which summarizes the ideology of the noucentista. But Torres is far from being an adherent of the ideology indicated by D'Ors; his evolution follows his own theoretical elaboration, explicit already in two texts published before the configuration of noucentisme as a trend around 1910: "Augusta et Augusta" (1904) and "La nostra ordinacio I el nostre cami" (1907). In Classicism, Torres searches for model of order, a language and an adequate cultural reference to overcome the realistic tendency of representation and to develop a Catalan art of capable of universal proportions. Objective which coincides with noucentisme, but Torres's radicalness paradoxically separate him from artists who follow this tendency — Sunyer, Canals, Aragay — and ultimately D'Ors.

Torres-García began teaching art in 1907 and "gradually became involved with an experimental school Colegio Mont d'Or founded by his friend the progressive educator Joan Palau Vera. Contrary to the academic expectations of the day, at Mount D'Or here were no copies from casts, prints or books; drawing went directly to reality: all the common objects of the house from the kitchen to the laboratory were paraded in front of students, as well as leaves, fruits, fish, flowers, animals. The vocabulary of universal constructivism was being developed as an exercise in progressive pedagogy."

In 1909, he married Manuela Piña i Rubíes, a Catalan, with whom he would have four children.

1910–1919

Torres-García traveled to Brussels to paint a Pavilion in the Brussels International World Fair. During this prolonged stay in Paris, he visited friends, museums and galleries. Though different, his art shared values with cubism and the theories exemplified in the exhibition organized and named by Jacques Villon in honor of Luca Paccioli, Section d'Or (Golden Section); an exhibition first shown in Paris.

On his first trip to Italy and Switzerland, Torres-García observed the ancient and the modern: futurism.

In 1911 he exhibited in the VI International Exhibition of Art in Barcelona the iconic painting "X Musa" which he donated by request of Prat de la Riba to the Institut d'Estudis Catalans were it still is today. "From the moment of its public appearance until today this work has been unanimously interpreted by the historiography as the foundational reference of noucentisme." 1912 solo exhibition at Galeries Dalmau of paintings and drawings.

In May 1913, he published his first book, Notes sobre Art (Notes on Art). In the introduction he writes "Aquestes curtes notes poden tenir interès, demes, per anar estretament lligades, com quelcom de viu, a tot o que arrencant de la nostra tradició, en el pensament i en la realitat, tendeix a formar el ver Renaixement e Catalunya" (These short essays may be of interest also because they are closely related to, something that is alive, sprung from our tradition, in thought and in reality, to form the true Renaissance of Catalonia). Founded the Escuela de Decoración (School of Decoration/Decorative Arts) in Sarrià. "Prat de la Riba had then his newly formulated conception of Catalan nationalism, and sees in the Mediterranean tradition proposed a positive content for the national profile, rich in spiritual substance. Prat de la Riba protects the painter and commissions the famous frescoes of the Deputation."

In 1913 he began to create murals for the decoration of the monumental atrium of the Municipal Palace of Barcelona. "Today the work of the Palace of the Generalitat of Catalonia is fortunately preserved faithfully in its most substantial core to its original architecture. It was not, however, until 1907, when Enric Prat de la Riba became chairman of the council, which began an important period dedicated to exalt building, parallel to the resurgence of the national political structure. ... Also began a series of mural paintings at the Salon Sant Jordi, an important work by the Uruguayan Catalàn artist Joaquim Torres-Garcia, remaining unfinished at the death of Prat de la Riba in 1917, going beyond the utilitarian and decorative to become the new symbol of the Catalonia noucentista."

He designed, built, and decorated with frescoes his home in Tarrasa, "Mon Repos" and invites friends and pupils to an inauguration party."

"For the next five years, he planned and executed murals in fresco technique, employing an "Iconostasis" composition, applied to a "pagan" subject matter and then to a modern theme, proving that classic is not solely associated to the Greek. He painted with orthogonal lines the rhythms of the structure used. This was an evolution he described in "El Descubrimiento de si mismo", and in the manifesto "Evolucionista" published in 1916. Torres-García would later use this same composition in his "Constructivist" works." What may be seen as a break in style of the figurative classical theme to the vibrant collage of images of "new" work is rather a deepening understanding the artist has for his work. " In one of the frescoes ...Torres-Garcia represented a gigantic Pan-god with a quote from Goethe's 'Faust' at his feet: 'The temporal is only a symbol'. "That is the key to all the poetics of Torres-García, the will to surrender to the ephemeral in order to reach eternity," explained Llorens. For Torres-Garcia, classicism was the door of a better future, not a brake for modernity."

In 1918 "Torres-Garcia can be seen exploring the grid structure,' on the one hand as an inherent characteristic of a modern city and on the other as a form to explore the symbolic potential of everyday motifs. He also explored the potential for language within images, as in the 1916–17 drawing 'Descubrimiento de si mismo (Discovery of Oneself)." Exhibition at Galeries Dalmau of "Joguines d'Art (Artistic Toys)". "The toys teach children which are the correct colors, the correct forms. Each toy is a form, a color that mixes with other shapes and colors and finally becomes a whole: a dog a car a city. The toys guide future generations to acquire a natural eye."

In 1919, Josep Puig i Cadafalch, the new president of the Mancomunitat prevented continuing the great work decoration Saló de Sant Jordi, in the old Palau de la Generalitat. Torres-Garcia sold the house he had designed and built in Terrassa in 1914, Mon Repos, and left his second homeland. "he determined to take the pulse of the greatest and most modern of cities, New York."

1920–1929

Departs a second time for Paris, with thirty-two crates of paintings. After an encounter with his friend Picasso, who advised him not to leave Paris a " not to go to America, because it will be like leaping into a void" his work turns to cubism, while Picasso's to classicism. Yet seeking to experience a modern city, he travels to New York. He stayed for a while at 138 West 49th Street. Later moves to 14th Street on the very day he became 46 years old. Shortly afterward at 4 West 29th Street, between Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Full of enthusiasm, he continued his series of book of sketches of cities he visited. He reflected symbolically the movement and atmosphere of New York. Paints a series of portraits, including one of Joseph Stella. The vertical city enhances the orthogonal structure of his cityscape. Works at painting scenery and costumes of The Great Way, a story of the joyful, the sorrowful, the glorious. Exhibits at The Whitney Studio Gallery and The Society of Independent Artists together with Stuart Davis and Szukalski. Dada art all over again. He described his work as "... what painting Torres-García created at that time? ..." he asks himself: "... expressionistic and geometric at the same time, and very dynamic"

Returns to Italy in 1922. Further development of his Classic and Evolutionistic works. Spain forbids Catalan language, among which Torres- Garcia's writings are included. Death of his mother. In 1925 settles in France, Villefranche-sur-Mer.

Moves to Paris for the third time. Throughout the next six years Torres becomes one of the principal animators of abstraction movement between the wars. an ample movement integrated by young artist of several European countries and from 1930 based mainly in Paris and organized in three movements Abstraction-Creation and Cercle et Carre. Exhibits 34 works, a series of large classical nudes and paintings from New York at Galerie A. G. Fabre. " Forty works make up this presentation of Torres-Garcia first exhibit here at Galerie Fabre: frescoes, fragments of large murals, assembled architectural maquettes, still life or figures ...They show the artist under different aspects manifesting all the fiery wealth and complex diversity. Some urban landscapes will give an idea of the passage of Torres-Garcia by New York were feverish spectacle of the business city captivated some time his artistic inquietude in search of its rhythm. Although he has played a major role in the development of the Mediterranean school, Garcia is bent with such a force towards his personal inclination he has always cleared away from the prejudices of isms (schools) that might limit his personal growth" "However, by returning to the Classicism of his early work he made it clear that this was not an artistic language he had sought to vanquish through abstraction". May 1927 group show with Stanislaw Eleszkievicz and Runser at Galerie d'art du Montparnasse. Solo exhibit of paintings at Galerie Carmine, "Quelques Peintures" 16 to 30 June 1927. Solo exhibit at Galerie Zak in December 1928. Group exhibition in Galerie des Editions Bonaparte with John Graham, Kakabadze, Tutundjian, and Vantongerloo in August 1929. Solo exhibit in Galerie Carmine. A correspondent for the Catalan literary magazine Mirador, writes series of articles on painters including an interview of Georges Braque. "'But if Mondrian wanted to explore modernity by a single path, he (Torres-Garcia) wanted to get to the bottom by two paths at the same time, starting from reason but not avoiding intuition'

1930-1939

In 1931 he has two solo exhibits at Galerie Jeanne Bucher and Galerie Percier, in October a group show at Georges Petit with Giacometti, Ozenfant, Max Ernst, Miro, Salvador Dalí . In 1932 a solo exhibit at Galerie Pierre of paintings and sculptures. "The friendship between Van Doesburg and Torres-Garcia will create the foundations for the three most important movements to promote abstract art: "Cercle et Carre" (1929–1930), "Art Concret" (1930); and "Abstraction-Creation"(1931–1936)." ".. he founded the magazine Cercle et Carre with Theo Van Doesburg, and with many difficulties assembled a group of 80 artists who exhibited in No. 23 rue de la Boetie. "

Leaves for Madrid. Finishes the manuscript of "Arte Constructivo" published in 1935 with under the name "Estructura", dedicated to his friend Piet Mondrian. Teaches and lectures.

April 1934 at sixty returns for the first time since childhood to Montevideo. In August exhibit of paintings and sculptures and also exhibits the work of the "Cercle et Carre" group from his personal collection and reedits the magazine as "Circulo y Cuadrado" to stimulate his students. As he did in Barcelona he now shapes the artistic education of Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Chile. In 1937 publishes autobiographical novel "Historia de mi vida (Story of my life)" writing from the third person point of view. 1939 designs the "Monumento Cosmico" build and etched under his directions in granite. Paints a series of portraits under the name of "Men, Heroes and Monsters ".

1940-1949

Announces closing of school Association of Constructive Arte when he made last of 500 lectures he gave between the years 1934-1940. In 1941 publishes "Ciudad sin Nombre (A city without name)". In November solo exhibition at Society of Architects of Uruguay. In July 1942 receives a visit from Lincoln Kirsten curator for the Comity of Inter-American Relations and Nelson A. Rockefeller. 1943 after requests to teach again from his sons the "Taller Torres Garcia" begins, similar to the European Bauhaus. This school included future artists like Gonzalo Fonseca, José Gurvich, Alceu Ribeiro, Julio Alpuy and Torres García's sons, Horacio and Augusto Torres, among others. 1944 Revisits the maternity theme from 1914 mural in Barcelona creating another mural for the Syndicato Medico de Uruguay. His friend Mondrian dies. This same year he paints 7 monumental mural frescoes in monochrome and in primary colors using common paint at the Hospital Saint Bois for tuberculosis patients with the idea it will nurture healing. There is a large series of paintings which explore the themes of the murals.

Dies 8 August while preparing two exhibitions one at Sidney Janis Gallery in New York and other at Pan American Union in Washington.

The Joaquín Torres García Hall in the Palace of the Generalitat of Catalonia houses the frescoes the artist painted in the walls of Salon Sant Jordi in the years 1912–1916, commissioned by the President of the Council and the Commonwealth of Catalonia, Enric Prat de la Riba.

"Actual work on the first mural began on his birthday, July 28. It lasted 13 days precisely in the 13th year of the century. It was unveiled on September 13."

After the death of Prat de la Riba, his patron, the superb examples of modern classicism, the monumental murals created by Torres-Garcia for the Palace of the Generalitat in the Hall of St. George, iconic symbols of the previous government, will be interrupted first, then threatened by Joan Vallès i Pujals, new president of the council, and finally "destroyed" (covered with other paintings). Recovered in 1966, are currently displayed in another room of the Palace Hall called Torres-García.

Poemes en ondes hertzianes 1919

Illustrations by Joaquin Torres-Garcia.

Art Critics on Torres-Garcia

Claude Schaefer, J.Torres-Garcia, Buenos Aires, 1945

"Toward the end of the century, Torres-Garcia was painting-with energy and speed worthy of his favorite master, Toulouset Lautrec-scenes from Barcelona life. The Boqueria market offered a grouping of popular types, evoked through silhouettes in motion. The rhythm of modern life was always a preoccupation of the artist. The Barcelona of 1900 tempted him to reproduce, for the first time, those evocative aspects of daily life. He translated them marvelously, conveying with a few touches the fleeting enchantment of the dress and customs of the epoch, in compositions where each person is placed with the precision of a Gothic etching… The art of Puvis de Chavannes brought him, according to Torres-Garcia's own words, "to the conception of a style of painting, with · the general order, which could be of all time but which was also traditional, and that is what he wanted to attain. But the pseudo-monumental art of Puvis soon led him to the study of the primitive Italians, and above all, to Greek art."

J.Bowyer Bell, J.Torres-Garcia, Review, New York, 1997

"There are two most fascinating aspects of Torres-Garcia's work. First he came late - about fifty - to his signature style, the monochromatic grids filled with symbols, here displayed in several large works, several small, and a row of tiny and intricate drawings. Second, he did not abandon his other concerns. Pollock and de Kooning may have returned to the subject, with their signature style intact, but Torres-Garcia never quite gave up earlier styles just because he had found a special way into the future. The grid would dominate his last years, but there were other ventures that to the innocent could have been undertaken by someone else - an earlier Torres-Garcia, another Torres-Garcia. For the last twenty years, the product of his trip was great art, special, particular, not of any school, profound enough to be of general use and special enough never to be mistaken. Once a Torres-Garcia grid is seen it is never forgotten, and each grid is different and the same, rich and private and universal. So all the warnings and axioms and admonishments fail: influence did not ruin Torres-Garcia but released him, a signature style did not ever confine him; he made what he wanted to make, went backward as well as forward, saw no need to manufacture his patented style over and over, small variations and great prices as is the practice of our times. He painted his special way on most occasions and on occasion did not because that was his way idiosyncratic, splendid, and special. Rules are made for historians and critics, not for painters, not for Joaquin Torres-Garcia. Look at his works, on his progress and his career, ye knowledgeable and despair. He did it his Way. He followed his own internal governor not the rules. He made what he wanted, when he wanted. He made what interested him, made it in his own way."

Terence Grieder, TorresGarcia Father of Pop Art, Austin 1972

"Pop Art and conceptual art owe debts to Torres-Garcia, and he contributed to our belief in manipulative experience in childhood education… Torres-Garcia's later work is laid out according to the complicated geometric rules of the Golden Section. He shared with the Argentine writer Borges a mystical fascination with symbols, numbers and coincidences, which led to quasi-mathematical compositions. The composition became a powerful structure of black lines on a neutral background or filed with flat colors. Set among the lines as if into boxes, are simplified linear designs symbolizing ideas: the clock as time, the compass as space, the star as the heavens, a hammer as human labor. Reality becomes a mechanistic clockwork of great ideas, a computer program of universal philosophy. In theory a computer could print out such a painting, but Torres-Garcia continually revised his own program to give the visual! ·effects he wanted, subordinating the symbolic to the aesthetic. he anticipated McLuhan's dictum that the medium is the message. For Torres-Garda, however, the structure was the medium, not the paint. During the late l930's he eliminated· the symbols and painted just the blocks, shaded like an elaborate stone wall. Comparisons with Inca walls are deceptive, for these painted structures owe more to the ideals of the Greek temples than to any American invention. These structural designs are among Torres-Garcia's greatest achievements. They bore fruit even in such distant flowers as Louise Nevelson, the American sculptor. But thy violate Torres-Garcia's desire to humanize structural order by making it the receptacle of men's ideas and creations. Art and life have been difficult for abstract artists to bring together Mondrian, for example, who was a friend of Torres-Garcia and a profound influence on him, was above mundane reality Torres-Garcia wrote of him " Mondrian is on bad terms with nature", and commented that "He could never marry because he had not found the perfect woman". An altogether different personality, Torres-Garcia ·not only married and had four children, but strove constantly to humanize the abstract by filling it with symbols of real life, many of them referring to his own experiences and memories. A devoted father to his own children, he also taught drawing to children for five years in the progressive Colegio Mont d'Or, near · Barcelona. This was more than just a job, for he was a born educator. Ironically, more widely educational than his teaching were the toys which he first designed for his own children in 1915, and which he later tried to market the venture was wiped out by a New York warehouse fire just before Christmas in 1923. The toys were painted wooden pieces which built into cars, people, animals and a village Each one was a small Constructivist sculpture, and as such, they were shown in the Whitney Studio club in New York in · 1921… The ·toys have descendants in toys widely sold in this country now, but they also have descendents in the larger Pop Art wooden sculptures of Marisol. It is not surprising to anyone who has contemplated Torres-Garcia's paintings that his influence has been great on sculpture. Not only in symbols do his paintings invade the real world, but also in their implications of buildable structure. Objects of contemplation, of course, are what Torres-Garcia gives us, not building plans. In their simplicity, his paintings are like memories. In fact, they are like diagrams of the shared memories of generations of Europeans cast up on the shores of the Americas."

Kosme de Barañano, The fire under the ashes, New York, 2003

"T. S. Eliot. in his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" [published in The Sacred Wooal. indicates that poetry and therefore every art form, "is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But of course only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things." The nomad Joaquin Torres-Garcia (1876-1949) starts from the structural lesson of Paul Cézanne from the line as bearer of space and color as plastic elements that are superimposed and work dialectically. In his essay entitled Universalismo constructivo (Constructive Universalism), the artist writes: "Cezanne was the first revolutionary painter of our time. He thought about the landscape about color ... but he also thought about geometry. So this return to structure has its beginning in him." Torres-Garcia's drawing is a lesson in economy and knowledge of the world. It is a self-reflection on the visual sign and sign systems in history; it is a theory of the visual knowledge of the memory of oneself, of how to make one's own signs become the flesh of memory. And that memory returns to its sources, to the origins of our ancestors who scrawled the first signs and made the first graphic systems, like a river that returns to its sources, when the 20th century artist, like a child with no consciousness of memory or the passage of time, builds his erector set toy free of rhetoric. The ink drawing Modulo de Creacion: el Hombre Abstracto (Module of Creation: Abstract Man) from 1933 is a self-reflection of this constructive kind. When Torres-Garcia speaks of constructivism he is not referring to Russian constructivism or to Dutch neoplasticism but rather to art based on the principles of geometric order, whether they come from Egypt or Mexico, Greece or the European Gothic. And when he speaks of primitivism he is not referring to the aborigine, to what remains uncivilized, but rather to the original, to the natural, to what is not contaminated by other forms of looking. He thus achieves a work that brings together the conceptual (the symbolic) with the visual (the sign), creating a personal combination, a new language like an Egyptian frieze of the 20th century. There is a search for beauty, for the formal ideal of the circle and the square in Torres-Garcia that is a slow, disciplined and repetitive search like Gregorian chant. Torres-Garcia's work is not a repetition of multiple attempts to reach the same thing but rather it is the process of discovery first and then the perfecting of an image that invades his mind. It is a vision of an idea that he wants to capture once and again, like one who harmonizes on the piano of the sheet of paper, time and again until finding the right tone. As Carmen Bernardez has indicated in an interesting essay on "El esencialismo lineal de lngres" ("lngres' Linear Essentialism"l (Anales de Historia del Arte, n. 6 Madrid 1996) the line is a kind of language, "a ciphered language, because its traits do not shape letters but rather allude to and at least apparently outline the tangible reality of objects. However, the language of the line, for lngres is entirely a code." Similarly for Torres-Garcia, the line is a code with which he writes his personal aesthetic, his Mayan and Platonic codices of the circle and the square; which is to say, it is constructive. From their solitude and their Platonism, Picasso, Chaissac, Dubuffet, Torres-Garcia, and finally Basquiat confront that universality of the private where what each one of us is manifests itself, outside of our world of influences."

Tomas Llorens, Torres-Garcia, Lexington, 2010

" As is well known, Torres-García and Picasso were contemporaries. Both initiated their artistic lives in modernist Barcelona and, although their artistic interests were diverse, the focus of their attention centered on the representation of ‘modern life’ in both its typical and anecdotal aspects. This was a world of fashionable young ladies, prosperous bourgeoisie, Bohemian writers, picturesque actors, ragged and amusing artists, and so on, whose epicenter and privileged observatory was the cafe Els Quatre Gats…The most appropriate medium in which to depict that world was the print…The language came from Paris; the favorite models were Toulouse-Lautrec and Steinlen…the dominant interest of many artists of that generation shifted and reoriented toward the idealized and classicized paintings of Puvis de Chavannes.

Study on Picasso has been quite slow in recognizing the generational character of this shift. For a long time the ‘blue period’ of Picasso was described as if it was a personal invention that emerged exclusively from the core of his genius. But it is not difficult to identify affinities connecting the work of the Malagan artist between 1901 and 1904 (mainly in Barcelona) with that of Catalan artists of his generation, most notably Nonell. Like theirs, Picasso’s painting was sentimental and narrative, orienting itself toward the world of the socially marginalized...His ideology shifted, merging into the long, broad wake of European symbolisms. Picasso drew attention to this change of course through his interest in various artistic models related to symbolism, such as Gauguin and Carriere. However, Puvis de Chavannes was one of those he studied most attentively. Most recent writers recognize that without the influence of Puvis, Picasso’s blue paintings would have been very different, or perhaps, would not have been produced at all. …one of Picasso’s main objectives during his third stay in Paris (October 1902 to January 1903) was the study of the frescoes Puvis had painted in the Pantheon.

Study of Puvis’ frescoes in the Pantheon was also the main objective of Torres-García’s first journey to Paris. While it is true that this visit did not occur until 1910, it is also true that his enthusiasm for the French master began earlier and proved more intense than Picasso’s. In July 1901, while Picasso was still working under the influence of Toulouse-Lautrec and Steinlen, Torres drew a literal Puvis-like cover for the emblematic magazine Pel i Ploma…In contrast to Picasso, who perceived Puvis through the lens of miserabilist sentimentality, Torres-García’s response implied an explicit vindication of Puvis’ classicism, and did so quite clearly at the beginning of 1905.… by the following spring, 1906, he made a similar turn to classicism. He conceived and began work on a large composition (El abrevadero) whose principle source was the ’panathenaea‘procession. It is true that the classicism to which Picasso appealed at this moment drew on French inspiration (responding to Le bonheur de vivre of Matisse and, like Matisse, explicitly referring to Ingres), whereas in the case of Torres it was connected with the incipient Catalan noucentisme. But there are several reasons why such differences are not clear cut. First, the ideological connotations of noucentisme (which later separated the two artists) were still to a large extent undefined. Second, the ascendance of classicism as the art of the new century was felt with force among young artists on both sides of the Pyrenees. Maillol, for example, still at this point a nabí artist largely unknown to the public, was an object of fascination equally for Matisse, who sought his help in the project of Nu bleu: Souvenir de Biskra, as for Clara and Casanovas, two Catalan sculptors of Picasso’s generation. Third, Picasso, after nearly two years in Paris and at a moment of profound artistic reorientation, sought new contact with Catalonia… A detailed examination of Picasso’s production between August 1906 and June 1907 reveals a wandering from classicism to archaism, to primitivism and vanguardism, a journey that did not connect or in any way resolve its beginning and ending points. It was this journey that brought about the first major divergence between the trajectories of Picasso and Torres-Garcia. While the former achieved a central position in the Parisian avant-garde, the latter became increasingly involved in the project of Catalan noucentisme. A few years later, however, the series of frescoes conceived and painted by Torres for the Palau Sant Jordi between 1912 and 1917 … it seems to have gone largely unnoticed, is Torres’ affinity with the journey that had taken Picasso from El abrevadero to Les demoiselles d’Avignon a few years earlier. A similar journey can be traced in the work of Torres, again without connecting or resolving its beginning and end. He moved from the classicism of his first fresco, La Catalunya eterna, still close to Puvis, to an increasingly manifested archaism, which terminated in the primitivism of his last fresco, Lo temporal no es mes que simbol…Sureda, a scholar of the Catalan period of Torres, in discussing the central figure of Lo temporal no es mes que simbol, the drawing of Pan, evokes the Matisse of La Danza or La Música. … despite different circumstances and times, in the span of a decade (between 1906 and 1917, to be precise), the three artists experienced a journey that led, without making connections or resolving differences (I insist on emphasizing this), from classicism to archaism, from archaism to a primitivism, a journey that placed them, if not in the vanguard, then at its very edge…Around 1917 the avant-garde ’vibracionismo‘ of Torres-García appears to have been drawn in counterpoint to the second classical period (archaic at times) of Picasso. The lines then converged around 1925, when a primitive period began for both artists, more explicit in the case of Torres, more hidden and indirect in that of Picasso (although more violent, in a way reflecting his surrealistic contagion). They again diverged around 1930, when Torres donned the robe (typically avant-garde) as prophet of the future (with archaic traces), while Picasso, along with Matisse, became models of post-vanguard modernity. … In the historiography of 20th Century art, classicism and avant-garde have been articulated as fundamental and contradictory poles. From this point of view, it is impossible to cross from one to the other without a rupture, and that rupture must be fraught with moral overtones akin to a religious conversion. This situation explains the difficulties experienced by a historian such as Cassou, militant defender of the bipolar model, in understanding the process through which a classicist artist such as Torres-García transformed into avant-garde. A similar, though inverse, historiographical incapacity occurs in the case of the more widely disseminated accounts of the two classical periods of Picasso. The first, of 1906, is often ignored or distorted with the excuse of brevity (e.g., Daix implausibly presents the study of Ingres that Picasso undertook in Gosol as an indication of vanguardism). The second classical period, from 1917-1925, is still disturbingly labelled as ‘retour a l'ordre’, implying a stigma of incoherence or moral liability. It is necessary to look past the bipolar model characteristic of modern classical historiography to discover that classicism and avant-garde were ideas that could exert homologous influences. Some prominent examples, such as Picasso or Torres-García, demonstrate that, at least for artists of their generation and in the historical conditions of the first two or three decades of the century, it was possible to move easily from one to the other, although without connecting the two or resolving their differences, by way of such concepts as archaism or primitivism."

Selected Writings

Selected paintings

Murals

Major exhibitions