Cecilia de Torres, Ltd.

Installation at Cecilia de Torres, New York, 1995

Installation at Cecilia de Torres, New York, 1995

Installation at Cecilia de Torres, New York, 1995

Installation at Cecilia de Torres, New York, 1995

Installation at Cecilia de Torres, New York, 1995

Installation at Cecilia de Torres, New York, 1995

Installation at Cecilia de Torres, New York, 1995

Installation at Cecilia de Torres, New York, 1995

65 Years of Constructivist Wood: 1930-1995

Works by: Julio Alpuy, Lidya Buzio, Marta Chilindron, Gonzalo Fonseca, José Gurvich, Sergio Gutman, Francisco Matto, Manuel Pailós, César Paternosto, Alceu Ribeiro, Ladd Spiegel, Augusto Torres, Horacio Torres and Joaquín Torres-García.

The traditional conception of sculpture as a solid volume was shattered by the Cubist constructions initiated by Picasso in 1912. Built or assembled in cardboard, tin or wood, these figures or objects appear as the extended planes of the Cubist painting or collage, incorporating real space in a dialectical synthesis. The Constructivists continued this transformation of the sculptural experience, creating a new physical language of structure and form. The Constructivist woods in this exhibition illustrate the continuity and vitality of an art form with a long tradition. Many reflect the teachings of the Taller Torres-García, where the art of the Amerindian, African and Oceanic cultures was studied and valued equally with traditional Western art.

b. 1874 Montevideo, Uruguay - d. 1949 Montevideo, Uruguay

When Torres-García arrived in Montevideo on April 30, 1934 after forty-three years of absence, Torres-García told the press that he had returned to his native country of Uruguay in order to "develop a wide range of activities, to lecture, to teach courses, to achieve... on walls what I have already achieved on canvas,... to create in Montevideo a movement that will surpass the art of Paris."  These lofty ambitions were achieved through the creation of his world famous workshop, the Taller Torres-García, where he taught his theory of Universal Constructivism to future generations of Latin American artists.

Before returning to Uruguay, Torres-García had arrived at the concept of Universal Constructivism after a long development during which his painting evolved from Mediterranean classicism through periods of Vibrationism, Cubism, and Fauvism.  A truly global artist, Torres-García lived in Spain, New York, Italy, and Paris, where his theories and aesthetic style culminated into his characteristic incorporation of symbols located in a geometric grid based on the golden section. 

The uniqueness of Torres' proposal consisted of his incorporation of essential elements of indigenous American art into the basic principles of European constructivism and geometric abstraction.  Today, he is recognized as a canonical figure in both Latin American and modern art in general, with works in prestigious public and private collections worldwide.

b. 1948, Montevideo, Uruguay -  lives in Long Island, New York since 1972

A unique talent in the world of ceramics, Buzio has been working in clay in New York since 1972.  Born in Uruguay, Buzio learned to create, form, and shape clay sculptures from the master ceramicist José Collell, based on ancient Amerindian practices.  Buzio continues to work with this same method, cutting earthenware slabs into geometric shapes, and then combining these cylinders, cones, and hemispheres to form the body of her sculptures.  Using special pigments which she mixes herself, the artist draws and paints directly onto her unfired works.  Before firing, Buzio burnishes her pieces; this step serves to fuse the paint into the clay and results in the unique luminosity and distinctive hues that characterize her artworks. 

After moving to New York, Buzio's pictorial vocabulary shifted to reflect her new, urban surroundings, inspiring her to create her New York Cityscapes, with their evocative rooflines, cast iron architecture and water towers.  Her latest series of abstract geometric designs executed in bright primary colors represents a new direction in her practice. 

Buzio's ceramics are found in the Painting & Sculpture Collection of the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums; the Honoloulou Academy of Art, Hawaii; the Victoria & Albert, London; National Museum of History, Taipei City, Taiwan and other international museums and private collections.

b. 1919, Cerro Chato, Uruguay - d. 2009, New York City

Growing up in the Uruguayan countryside with little exposure to art, Alpuy first began drawing at the age of twenty.  Within a year, the young artist met Joaquín Torres-García.  Inspired by the master's theories of universal constructivism, Alpuy joined the Taller Torres- García, and is today recognized as one of the Taller's most important members. 

In 1944, Alpuy contributed two murals as part of the Taller's project to decorate the St. Bois hospital in Uruguay; he would continue to create murals throughout his career.  Encouraged by Torres- García, Alpuy and other Taller members travelled to the Andean region of South America in 1945; this experience, along with other periods of travel during the 1950s in South America, Europe, and the Middle East profoundly affected the themes and structural composition of his art. 

In 1961, Alpuy emigrated to New York, where he remained for the duration of his life.  Alpuy's art has been featured in numerous exhibitions about the Taller Torres-García, as well as in several international one-person exhibitions.  His works are included in major international collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; The Morgan Library and Museum, New York; The Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection, New York; and Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales, Montevideo, Uruguay.

b. 1922 Montevideo, Uruguay - d. 1997 Seravezza, Italy

In 1942, Fonseca quit his architectural studies in order to pursue an artistic career.  Working under the direction of Joaquín Torres-García, Fonseca joined the artist's workshop, where he participated in the group's collective exhibitions, Removedor.  In 1945 Fonseca traveled with other Taller Torres-García members through Argentina, Peru, and Bolivia to study pre-Columbian art.  This experience, along with numerous trips throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa during the 1950s, profoundly affected Fonseca's formal and theoretical approach to art.

Although Fonseca left the College of Architecture in Montevideo as a youth, an emphasis on structure and architectonics is present throughout his oeuvre.  As a teenager, he taught himself to sculpt in stone and later returned to such sculptural practices after studying ceramics in Spain in 1953.  Fonseca moved to the United States in 1958, and later divided his time between New York and Italy, where he created large-scale marble sculptures. 

Artworks by Fonseca are included at The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museo Municipale, Pietrasanta, Italy; and the Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, among other collections.  The artist's works are also featured in numerous public spaces around the globe, including Tokyo; Palo Alto, California; New York; Reston, Virginia; and Montevideo.

b. 1951, Buenos Aires, Argentina – Lives in New York City since 1969

From her early veristic paintings to her contemporary sculptural installations, Chilindron has always created art which explores perspectival, temporal and spatial relationships.  In the 1990s, the artist began experimenting with furniture forms, altering their shape to reflect her point of view in relation to the physical.  From these works emerged Chilindron's collapsible sculptures, which can be opened and closed to alternate between flat, abstract compositions and fully three-dimensional forms. 

Since 2000, the artist has worked in transparent and color acrylics, creating manipulable objects which change shape and color.  In 2010, Chilindron was invited to create a public installation as part of the Fokus Lodz Biennale in Poland, and her most recent sculptures are currently featured as a special project at the Museum of Latin American Art (MoLAA) in Long Beach, California. Chilindron's artworks are  included in the collections of the Blanton Museum, Austin, Texas; El Museo del Barrio, New York; CIFO, Miami; Banco do Spiritu Santo, Portugal; the State University of New York; Fonds D’Art Contemporain de Ville de Geneve, Switzerland, and private collections internationally. 

b. 1927, Lithuania – d. 1974 New York City

Populated with figures and images that reflect his Jewish upbringing, his participation with the Taller Torres-García, and his profound admiration for the European art masters Breughel and Bosch, Gurvich's artworks combine a unique personal style with technical mastery. 

The child of Jewish immigrants, the artist was born in Lithuania and moved to Uruguay with his family in 1932.  There, Gurvich excelled at both music and the visual arts, and it was while studying the violin alongside Horacio Torres that the young artist was introduced to Horacio's father, Joaquín Torres-García.    Soon after, Gurvich joined the Taller Torres-García, participating in the workshop's exhibitions, writing for its publications, executing mural projects, and teaching.  Gurvich's role at the Taller later influenced the creation of his own workshop, the Taller Montevideo, where he taught the next generation of Uruguayan artists. 

In 1954 and again in 1964, the artist travelled to Europe and Israel, where he lived as a shepherd on the Ramot Menasche kibbutz.  These experiences profoundly influenced the iconography of his paintings and sculptures.  Moving to the United States in 1970, Gurvich joined his fellow Taller Torres-García artists Julio Alpuy, Horacio Torres, and Gonzalo Fonseca in New York City, where he continued to produce art until his premature death in 1974.

b. 1911, Montevideo, Uruguay - d. 1995, Montevideo, Uruguay

A founding member of the Taller Torres-García, Matto had studied painting as a child before meeting the atelier's founder in 1939.  Following this encounter and encouraged by the creative environment at the Taller, Matto's artistic production shifted from his early Surrealist-influenced work to paintings and sculptures with markedly orthogonal compositions; these works were often executed on humble material supports such as cardboard and found wood pieces.  At the age of 21, Matto traveled to Tierra del Fuego and acquired the first Pre-Columbian pieces of what was to become a major collection and an important influence on his art. 

 In addition to his paintings, drawings, and sculptures, Matto also executed large-scale murals, major outdoor sculptural installations, and conceived an unrealized plan for an artists' community. 

 His work has been exhibited at the Sálon des Surindépendants, Paris; the Stedelijk Museum, Netherlands; and in Spain, Italy, Germay, Moscow, Tokyo, New York, and throughout Latin America.  Matto's monumental concrete sculptures are landmarks in Punta del Este, Uruguay.

b. 1918 Galicia, Spain - d. 2004 Montevideo, Uruguay

The child of Spanish immigrants, Pailós studied painting at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Montevideo before joining the Taller Torres-Garcia in 1943.  Profoundly influenced by the pedagogy and theories of the workshop's founder, Joaquín Torres-García, Pailós was an important contributing member of the Taller throughout its existence, working as both a student and eventually a teacher. 

In addition to his drawing and painting production, Pailós executed sculptures in wood, granite, and other materials, and many of his reliefs and free-standing sculptures now grace parks and plazas in Montevideo.

 Works by Pailós have been exhibited extensively throughout Latin America, and in 1991 the artist was honored by the Spanish regional government of Galicia with a museum exhibition and sculpture commission for the gardens at the University of Santiago de Compostela.

b. 1913 Tarrasa, Spain - d. 1992 Barcelona, Spain

The eldest son of Joaquín Torres-García, Augusto was an active participant in his father's artistic life.  Growing up primarily in Italy and France, the young artist met many of the great figures of twentieth century art, including Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, and Joan Miró.  During the 1930s, while living in Paris with his family, Augusto was the apprentice of the sculptor Julio González and studied drawing in Amedée Ozenfant’s academy.  Introduced to North African and American Indian art by the painter Jean Hélion, it was also in Paris that the artist developed his lifelong passion for tribal and primitive art. 

After Torres-García brought his family to Uruguay in 1934, Augusto participated in all the activities of his father’s teaching atelier, the Taller Torres-García.  One of the Taller's most well known students, Augusto later went on become a teacher himself, instructing subsequent generations of artists.  Throughout his life, Augusto traveled widely, including two years living in New York. From 1973 on, he divided his time between Barcelona and Montevideo.

The art of Augusto has been displayed internationally in both solo and group exhibitions, and his work is included in the collections of such institutions as Museo Torres-Garcia, Montevideo; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Miró Foundation, Barcelona.

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.

b. 1931 La Plata, Argentina - lives in Segovia, Spain

After beginning his career working in an informalist mode followed by a brief period of lyrical figuration, Paternosto began creating his first artworks based on geometric abstraction in the early 1960s.  Before the end of this decade, Paternosto's formal and theoretical explorations led him to push beyond the very boundaries of the medium of painting.  Leaving the surface of the canvas blank, Paternosto moved the emphasis of his artworks to their outer edges, converting his paintings into objects and  destroying the inherited tradition of  only viewing paintings frontally.  Since this breakthrough, Paternosto has remained on the vanguard of abstraction in both Latin America and New York, where he lived for over four decades. 

In addition to his career as a painter, Paternosto has studied Pre-Columbian art with academic rigor.  This expertise has not only influenced his artistic practices, but has also led Paternosto to assume scholarly and curatorial roles, including his notable work producing the internationally exhibited show, Abstraction: The Ameridian Paradigm.   In 2005, Paternosto moved to Segovia, Spain, where a major retrospective of his works had been celebrated a year previously at the Esteban Vicente Museum of Contemporary Art.  Paintings by Paternosto are included in such prestigious collections as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; the Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland; and the Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, German, among many others.