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PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF BARBARA AND JOHN DUNCAN JOAQUÍN TORRES-GARCÍA (1874-1949) CONSTRUCTIVO EN BLANCO Y NEGRO

oil on board laid down on wood

signed lower left and dated 35 center left

This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné currently being prepared by Cecilia de Torres, no. P1935.17.
PROVENANCE

Estate of the artist (no. 396)
Manolita Piña de Torres
Rose Fried Gallery, New York (1967)
Catherine Goodman, New York (1972)
EXHIBITED

New York, Rose Fried Gallery, March, 1960, illustrated
San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Art, July-August, 1961
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

Artes de las Americas, Montevideo, Editorial Mosca, illustrated on the cover
CATALOGUE NOTE

When Torres-García painted Estructura, in 1935, he had recently settled in Montevideo. After 43 years abroad, he had returned to his native city that he left when he was barely seventeen. His homecoming was plagued by conflicting emotions; although he immediately involved himself in creating the Association of Constructivist Art, through which he hoped to disseminate his ideas. He also missed the stimulating Parisian art world. In Uruguay he confessed to feeling like "a foreigner in his own country."

To acquaint the public with his constructivist work, he exhibited, lectured extensively, and published many articles on his art theories and the latest art developments in Europe. Having to explain his ideas to others led him to revise and clarify them. Torres-García catalogued his repertory of symbols in charts, which he drew on long sheets of paper, divided into three vital areas: ideas, emotion, and life, identified by the drawing of a triangle, a heart and a fish respectively.

In Estructura (1935), Torres-García laid down the complete vocabulary of signs he had collected from diverse sources. Among this profusion of images, some forms have no reference to a real thing or object, while some are familiar, like the man, the classical temple, the sailing ship, the key, the compass, the five-pointed star, and the ever-present triangle, heart, and fish. Some figures are autobiographical like the pipe, which he was very fond of, and the letter M next to the female form that represents Manolita his wife.

Torres-García's familiarity with the language of symbols resulted in a fluent, script-like style. In Estructura, symbols are no longer isolated in a single compartment as in his earlier works; here each division of the structure holds many figures and images grouped by affinities; in the upper part for example, reason and intellect are represented by numbers, the ruler, geometric shapes, and the letter B, for the alphabet. Restricted to monochromatic tones, the "all over" picture surface is rich, almost Baroque, like a painterly symphony that leads the eye in a continuous sweep, from the top to the bottom, where large, forceful forms, like the vase on the left, his symbol for art, a triangle, and a Doric column seem to support the intricate composition.

As a long-time admirer of Torres-García, it is no surprise that Barbara Duncan selected such a distinguished painting for her collection.

Cecilia de Torres, 2005