Inverted America, 1943. Credit: © Museo Torres García

“Our North is the South” – this phrase summarizes the thinking of Joaquín Torres García, a Uruguayan artist, theorist, and educator who dedicated his life and work to elevating the art of Latin America, which was often disregarded at the beginning of the 20th century. 

Torres García lived part of his life in Europe, in cities like Paris and Barcelona, ​​and, instead of importing the classical molds of these artistic traditions, he incorporated Latin elements to create his own art. His works of geometric abstraction featured signs and symbols from the South, seeking to value ancestral and pre-Columbian cultures. Currently on display at CCBB São Paulo, Joaquín Torres García – 150 years In addition to artworks, it features documents, letters, and other writings by the artist, with the aim of disseminating his ideas to an even wider audience. 

Joaquín Torres García in his studio on Abayubá Street, 1934. Credit: ©Museo Torres García

The artist is best known in Brazil for Upside-Down AmericaThis 1943 drawing inverts the traditional cartographic representation, placing South America at the top of the map. The work condenses the idea of ​​constructive universalism, a synthesis between universal geometric abstraction and the traditions of pre-colonial America.

Held in partnership with the Torres García Museum in Montevideo, the exhibition is curated by the Brazilian Saul of Tarsus, which researches the pioneer of Latin American art and proposes a dialogue between his works and those of other artists, both contemporary and modern. "It's a great rhapsody that attempts to reiterate South America as a powerhouse of geometric art," says Tarso about the selection of works. 

The exhibition is not structured in thematic sections, but rather based on the writings and ideas of Torres García. The floors of the exhibition route are intersected by the line of the Treaty of Tordesillas – signed between Portugal and Spain in 1494 to divide the lands of the "New World" – which appears as a guiding thread and prompts reflection on the consequences of this agreement in the present day. 

“The exhibition starts from a continuous line, which mirrors, reflects, and zigzags through layers of time,” explains the curator. “We wanted to let the artist speak for himself – like a kind of archaeology of the future, with the ideas of a visionary of contemporary art.” He highlights Torres García's pioneering publications, such as Cercle et Carré, a magazine linked to geometric abstraction founded by him and Michel Seuphor in 1930 in Paris, one of the most important of the European avant-garde. "He brings, with a difference of 40 years, ideas that would only appear [in Brazil] in the Neo-Concrete art movement," he states.

In his work, geometry appears as a fundamental issue: simplified lines, squares, circles, the perpendicular axis, as well as the symbolism of diverse human cultures, uniting Western traditions with pre-Columbian and African art. His interest in these symbolic systems even led him to study signs in Brazilian rock art using archaeology textbooks.

More than 70 other artists – such as Arthur Bispo do Rosário, Volpi, Cildo Meirelles, Emmanuel Nassar, and Hélio Oiticica – are also on display. Names from Brazilian modernism, especially the concrete and neo-concrete movements of São Paulo, have been integrated to interact with the Uruguayan artist's works. 

Furthermore, one of the contemporary names participating is Anna Bella Geiger, who visited an important exhibition dedicated to the artist in 1978, affected by the fire that occurred at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro that same year. The artist will give an exclusive performance in his honor. Meanwhile, Montez Magno, from Pernambuco, presents a painting created shortly after the fire, which references Spanish traditions common to the Brazilian Northeast. Another person influenced by Torres García was Lina Bo Bardi, whose works promote the encounter between the ideas of both.

Torres García wrote around 10 books, in addition to numerous essays, manifestos, and pedagogical texts published in magazines and catalogs. He engaged in conversations with important artists of his time – among them Vincent Van Gogh, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, and Piet Mondrian, the latter being a collaborator with whom he maintained a lasting friendship. He even exchanged letters with the writer Cecília Meirelles, whose words open the exhibition. 

Tarso highlights the artist's pedagogy – he founded, in 1943, the Torres García Workshopin Montevideo. This was the main center for the formation, production, and dissemination of the ideas of constructive universalism. The artist proposed a rigorous pedagogical method, which included diverse artistic languages, with the objective of developing an art and aesthetics specific to Latin America. 

The “juguetes,” articulated wooden toys that the artist produced between the 1910s and 1920s as a way to support his family, are also on display. They function as practical models of the artist's constructive thinking, integrating childhood with modern art and stimulating an active relationship between form, structure, and space.

Dog, 1920. Credit: Marta and Paulo Kuczynski Collection

The exhibition was assembled from the collection of the Torres García Museum, since a large part of its masterpieces were lost in the fire at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. It is estimated that about 90% of the museum's collection was destroyed at the time. 

“This exhibition is a call for unity, for transcendence, not for deepening conflict, but for the pure and simple appreciation of who we are,” says Tarso. “We are not the new world – we are people who have come to meet old cultures and generate the renewal of old worlds. The idea is that people don't just pass through the exhibition, but rather experience it – through thought, through its history on the walls, through music and other interactive activations.” 

The curatorial approach offers a specific selection for each of the exhibition's stops. In São Paulo, the focus is geometric and symbolic, while in Brasília, the reflection explores the relationships between art, city, and public space, and in Belo Horizonte, the connection with popular art and the culture of Minas Gerais is explored. Some of the activations – such as the presence of music with decolonial themes, since Just a Latin American Boy, by Belchior, a South American, from Baiana System – will still be incorporated into the exhibition.

 


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