20TH CENTURY PAINTING IN FRANCE, BELGIUM, SPAIN AND ITALY
TORRES-GARCÍA, Joaquín (Montevideo, 1874 – Montevideo, 1949)
Constructive Composition
1936 [1]
Oil sobre canvas, 46 x 38.1 cm
Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza
Constructive Composition is a typical example of Torres-García’s mature work. The rectangle of the canvas has been divided, according to the rules of the golden section, into a series of rectangles of different formats and proportions constituting a coherent and uniform grid. The artist has inscribed in each of the rectangles a graphic symbol, in many cases based on the schematic form of an object. These pictograms—taken from the artist’s usual repertoire, as if they were dictionary entries—make up a kind of allusive message that represents the specific iconic content of this work. The palette, based on whites, blacks and a range of reddish or greenish browns, has the luminosity typical of the best works by Torres-García. The two diagonals of the painting establish the structure of the composition, which, however, is dominated by the descending line joining the upper left corner—in which we see the rectangle with the sun—and the lower right corner with the key and the heart.
Torres-García had arrived in Montevideo, his native town, after an absence of forty-three years, in the summer of 1934; he intended to establish himself as an artist and to disseminate in Uruguay the principles of modern art. In 1935 he founded the Asociación de Arte Constructivo (Constructive Art Association) and in May 1936, the year when he executed the work we are analysing, he published the first issue of Círculo y Cuadrado, the magazine which was to become be the mouthpiece of the association. The inscription that can be seen in the top right-hand rectangle, written in a personal alphabet that the artist had invented in 1935, is a reference to the Constructive Art Association.
Tomàs Llorens
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