Iron Gates, 1960, Wrought iron, 53½ × 26⅜ in. 136 × 67 cm
Idol, 1939, Pink granite, 20 x 12 in. 51 x 30,5 cm.
Seated nude on yellow tapestry, 1975, Oil on canvas, 62 x 50 in. 158 x 127 cm.
Three figures, 1975, Oil on canvas, 70 x 95½ in. 177,8 x 230 cm.
Figure with white throw on chair, 1972, Oil on canvas, 45 x 37 in. 114,3 x 94 cm.
Photograph of Horacio Torres by Alfredo Testoni, 1965
In Horacio Torres' studio, Montevideo, 1965, From left to right: Manuel Pailos, Augusto Torres, Horacio Torres, Francisco Matto
b. 1924 Livorno, Italy - d. 1976 New York City
Of the many painters who studied with his father, the great Constructivist artist Joaquín Torres-García, Horacio Torres made the quantum leap into the Contemporary art world of abstract and expressionistic painters in New York's 1970s. That he did so with figurative canvases was a singular achievement. Taken under the wing of the critic Clement Greenberg, who understood that Horacio's work was really about painting and was thoroughly modern, Horacio explored the thunderous territory of Titian, Velasquez and late Goya with a unique background of skill and aesthetic education in a contemporary way. Thus the series of headless nudes and of figures with faces obscured, make clear his painterly intentions and concerns. His monumental canvases are wondrous exercises of painted imagination formed with the structure of the depicted figure, but they are not about nudes, they are about painting.