The MACA of Uruguay pays tribute to the artist Joaquín Torres García

150 years after his birth, the MACA of Uruguay pays tribute to the artist Joaquín Torres García

On the 150th anniversary of his birth, the Uruguayan artist and pioneer of modern art Joaquín Torres García will be honored with the exhibition titled "The discovery of himself", which will take place from January to March at the Atchugarry Museum of Contemporary Art (MACA) , from the town of Maldonado.
Curated by the Argentine Aimé Iglesias Lukin and Cecilia Rabossi, "Joaquín Torres García. The discovery of himself" invites us to explore the fascinating transformation of the artist upon his return from his travels through Europe and America to Montevideo in 1934, which marked the beginning of his influence as "teacher of several generations of River Plate artists who continue his immense legacy to this day," the curators point out.
The exhibition will open simultaneously with two others dedicated to the Danish artist Adam Jeppesen and the Italian Bruno Munari on January 5 and can be visited until March 31 at the Pablo Atchugarry Foundation Museum in the Department of Maldonado, Uruguay.
On the other hand, the exhibition begins the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Joaquín Torres García (1874-1949), the promoter of Constructive Universalism, delving into the diverse and profound legacy of the important Uruguayan artist.
From the selection of works, the curators "propose a contemporary approach to the complexity of his thought, focusing on some events and concerns that marked his career," the museum indicates.
"Torres García is probably one of the most famous artists of modern Latin American art, participating in the first avant-garde of abstraction in Europe and proposing constructive universalism as an original artistic movement in his famous statement that 'our north is the South'", indicate the curators.
Based on the research of the artist's archive, the exhibition "aims to think about how this tour of the cities of the north – both in Europe and America – allowed him to understand, digest and rethink a new idea of modernity that would better dialogue with those who he was as an artist and as a citizen".
The title of the exhibition is inspired by the 1917 book of the same name by Torres García where it focuses on the trips as an "emotional and mental journey" that ended with his return to Montevideo.
About the curators, Iglesias Lukin is director and head of art curatorship at the Americas Society of the Council of the Americas in New York, United States; while Rabossi has just worked on the exhibition that the National Museum of Fine Arts dedicated to León Ferrari this year.
Torres García, whose father was Catalan and whose mother was Uruguayan, grew up on the outskirts of Montevideo in an environment of great freedom, with a self-taught school education and a spontaneous and unprecedented vocation for art in a family of merchants and carpenters.
He emigrated to Barcelona in 1891 with his family to the town of his ancestors, he completed a brief academic artistic training, returning to the self-taught path and earned a living working as an illustrator for magazines and books. At first. Crossed by the historical context, in 1920 he moved to New York and in 1926 he settled in Paris, joining the avant-garde and creating the group "Cercle et Carré".
In 1934 he returned to Montevideo with the intention of generating an artistic movement supported by the ideas of Constructive Universalism, which transcended the limits of aesthetic theory to become a way of understanding art and life. A year later he created the Constructive Art Association and in 1942 the Torres García Workshop was consolidated.
On the other hand, the contemporary art museum conceived and created by the sculptor Pablo Atchugarry, which opened its doors in January 2022, will inaugurate Adam Jeppesen's first exhibition in South America under the title "At the Passage of the Light." He is an artist known for his striking photographic works that invite you to explore the subtle nuances between the tangible and the ephemeral. On the other hand, the third exhibition called "Bruno Munari: The Artist", curated by Marco Meneguzzo and more than 120 works, is dedicated to the prolific Italian artist (Milan 1907-1998) known for having contributed to permeabilizing the borders between artistic languages.
Organized by the MACA Museum, it is the first large anthological exhibition dedicated to his activity as an artist where his achievements in the fields of futurism, concrete, kinetic and conceptual art are addressed, marked by the historical context of seven decades.
The samples will have public programs and publications and can be visited until March 2023 at Ruta 104, Km 4.5, Manantiales, Department of Maldonado, Uruguay, and for more information you can consult at www.macamuseo.org. (Telam)