Cecilia de Torres, Ltd.

Modernism: Montevideo & Buenos Aires 1930-1960 2001 - 2002 Winter



Modernism: Montevideo & Buenos Aires 1930s-1960s

In the years before World War II through the end of the 1960s, the two capital cities on the banks of the Rio de la Plata enjoyed a vibrant art scene, the result of great prosperity and an active trans-Atlantic dialogue with the European avant-garde. This exhibition consists of abstract paintings, drawings and wood constructions by artists who participated in the seminal modernist movements of the region: the Asociación de Arte Constructivo (AAC), the Taller Torres-García (TTG), Arte Concreto Invención and the Madí group.

Very few works of the 1930s survived the public's lack of appreciation, causing them now to be even more precious to the history of Modernism. The exhibition includes two delicate watercolor and ink compositions by Amalia Nieto, an artist who at 92 is the only surviving witness to the modernist struggles of the AAC. A bold composition in ink and a subtle painting by Augusto Torres, were inspired by the refined Graphisms of Paul Klee. A 1936 oil by Héctor Ragni on the other hand, is strictly geometric - composed of a circle, a triangle and rectangles. It was painted the same year that the AAC artists participated in the Salon des Surindépendants in Paris and re-issued the 1930-1 Parisian art publication Cercle et Carré as Círculo y Cuadrado in Montevideo. Published until 1943, it circulated abroad to institutions like MOMA and to artists including Piet Mondrian, Georges Vantongerloo and Julio González.

A 1947 wall relief by Gonzalo Fonseca uses thin wood strips to create a form reminiscent of two figures. A schematic drawing for an outdoor mural and a hanging sculpture/ceiling lamp by Horacio Torres attest to the effort to introduce Constructivism into all aspects of daily life. Two rare 1959 oils by José Gurvich in black and white drift from geometric to organic abstraction - all curves and rhythm, inspired by his efforts to apply the rules of musical composition to painting.

By 1956 when Volutas was painted, Alfredo Hlito (1923-1993) had abandoned the irregular frame or shaped canvas characteristic of the Madí group. Volutas is an exploration of color and its interrelation with dynamic form; its three curlicues in bright red, green and ochre on a blue background echo Kandinsky's concept that color is the materialization of the "inner sound."

Positive-Negative, two panels painted in gray, black and white by Antonio Llorens (1920-1995) investigates the optical possibilities of the space-color relation in opposition. This work exemplifies the Concrete-Invention and Madí group ideas as defined by one of its members, the sculptor Gyula Kosice: "Nothing similar to what is invented exists in the external world, it makes real what is non-existent, itself becomes a reality."

A painted border surrounds the all white front of the picture plane in César Paternosto's Evidence, 1969. By emphasizing the "outer" edge over that of the front, the familiar frontal viewing experience is put to the test by this oblique mode of seeing. The work shown here and in two other current exhibitions that study the sources and development of Abstraction in North and South America: Abstraction: The Amerindian Paradigm at the IVAM in Spain, and Abstract Art from the Rio de la Plata, Buenos Aires and Montevideo 1933-53 at the Americas Society in New York, have yet to be fully integrated into the history of 20th Century abstract art.

 



Antonio Llorens

Antonio Llorens was a student at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Montevideo and became a member of the MADÍ group during the 1940s.  Also a founder of the Uruguayan Group of Abstract Art, his work was in numerous exhibitions of the MADÍ group including the important 1958 Parisian MADÍ International, Groupe Argentine at the Galerie Denis René; the 1961 15 Years of MADÍ Art, Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires; Vanguardias de la década de los 40, Arte MADÍ Perceptismo, Museo Sivori, Buenos Aires in 1980; the 2001 Abstract Art From the Rio de la Plata, 1930s to 1950, Americas Society, New York and Tamayo Museum, Mexico City.

Llorens was an influential proponent of geometric and abstract art in Uruguay. He was commissioned to paint public and private murals, taught from 1962 to 1972 at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in Montevideo, and in 1987 was awarded the National Prize Pintura INCA in Montevideo.  Llorens work is in the prestigious Blaquier Collection, the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, the Cisneros Collection in Caracas, Venezuela, and the CIFO collection in Miami, among others.    


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Gonzalo Fonseca

Born in Montevideo in 1922, Fonseca traveled frequently to Europe with his family visiting museums and archeological sites that made a great impression on him.  At 15, he learned to sculpt in stone.  In 1939, Fonseca enrolled in the College of Architecture of Montevideo, but by 1942, he abandoned his architectural studies and joined the Taller Torres-García.  Along with Jonio Montiel, Sergio de Castro and Julio Alpuy in 1945, he traveled through Argentina, Peru and Bolivia to study pre-Columbian art.  In 1950, Fonseca moved to Paris, then Rome in 1951.  He traveled through North Africa and the Middle East where he joined in excavations directed by Petrie Flinters.  Living in Madrid in 1953, Fonseca studied ceramics at Rosedal - La Moncloa and met the Spanish sculptor Jorge de Oteiza.  In 1956, he returned to Montevideo and in 1958, moved to New York.  In 1970, Fonseca began working in Italy, near Carrara, on large marble pieces.  Fonseca lived and worked in New York and Seravezza, Italy.  He died in Italy, June 11, 1997.


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José Gurvich

Born in Lithuania, 1927; died in New York, 1974.

A violin student along with Horacio, the younger son of Torres-García, Gurvich studied with Torres-García and was a part of the Taller Torres-García until 1962. He spent several years on an Israeli kibbutz and traveled in France and Italy before settling in New York in 1970. Gurvich achieved a unique style as well as technical mastery. His work is populated with figures and images that combine the iconography of his Jewish upbringing, the formative years with Torres-García, his great admiration for Breughel and Bosch and a life spent in Montevideo, Israel and New York.


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Francisco Matto

Born 1911 and died 1995 in Montevideo, Uruguay

Privately tutored and a child painter, Matto at age 21, 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. Matto met Torres-García in 1939, joining his atelier and exhibiting with the artists of the Taller Torres-García until the 1960s. An elegant, aristocratic man, Matto worked with humble materials, preferring cardboard to canvas and found pieces of wood for his sculptures. His work has been exhibited at the Sálon des Surindépendants, Paris; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; in Spain, Italy, Germany, Moscow, Tokyo, New York and throughout Latin America. Matto's monumental concrete sculptures are landmarks in Punta del Este, Uruguay.


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Héctor Ragni

1897, Buenos Aires, Argentina - 1952, Montevideo, Uruguay

Ragni´s family moved to Montevideo in 1915 where Héctor continued his art studies and activities. In 1918, Ragni sailed for Europe, living in Barcelona and returning to Uruguay after ten years abroad. In 1934, Ragni met Torres-García and joined the Asociación de Arte Constructivo. Active in the artistic and cultural movements of the time and a participant in the numerous exhibitions of the AAC and later the Taller Torres-García, Ragni had a strong graphic sense coupled with superb technical mastery. His line drawings are highly coveted as there are few canvases extant.


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Augusto Torres

Born in Tarrasa, Cataluña, 1913; died in Barcelona, 1992. 

The first son of Torres-García, Augusto grew up primarily in Italy and France. In 1927, the family shared a house with the painter Jean Hélion, who inspired Augusto in his passion for collecting North African and American Indian art. Hired by the Musée de l’Homme to document their Pre-Columbian pottery, he studied tribal and primitive art. In the early 1930s, Augusto was an apprentice to the sculptor Julio González and studied drawing in Amedée Ozenfant’s academy. 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. Throughout his life, Augusto traveled widely; including two years living in New York City, a recipient of a New School grant. From 1973 on, he divided his time between Barcelona and Montevideo. An inspirational teacher, he instructed several of today’s fine young artists.


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Horacio Torres

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.


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César Paternosto

Born in Argentina in 1931, César Paternosto has exhibited widely internationally.  From 1967 to 2005, he worked in New York as a painter, sculptor, author and curator.  His works are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City; Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y.; Menil Collection, Houston, Texas; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina; among many others.

Since he began working as an artist in the early 1960s, César Paternosto has been in the vanguard of abstraction in Latin America.  An expert on the symbolic systems of Pre-Columbian civilizations, Paternosto has used his own photography and drawings to document and analyze the ancient remains of the region.  This research was published in The Stone and The Thread - Andean Roots of Abstract Art, University of Texas Press in 1996. Paternosto's exploration of Amerindian abstraction fueled his artistic work over thirty years.

In 1998, César Paternosto curated for Cecilia de Torres, Ltd. the ground breaking exhibition and catalogue: North and South Connected: An Abstraction of The Americas, which explored abstraction in Amerindian art and chronicled its influence on 20th Century artists (Albers, Gottlieb, Nevelson, Torres-García, etc.).  That exhibition was expanded by Paternosto into the major survey, Abstraction: The Amerindian Paradigm, for the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels and that traveled to the IVAM in Valencia, Spain, with over 160 works of modern art and ancient textiles, ceramics and objects.

In the spring of 2002, Paternosto's works on paper, from the 1960s to then, were exhibited at the Drawing Center in New York.  In 2004, he had a retrospective at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Esteban Vicente, in Segovia, Spain where he moved in 2005. 

The 2007 exhibition High Times Hard Times New York Painting 1967-1975, included his 1969 side-painted work ElSur.  Paternosto’s 2006 three-panel Ritmos Verticales II, was part of the Smithsonian Institute’s Southern Identity – Contemporary Argentine Art exhibition in Washington in 2010.

In 2010, the Spanish architect Rafael Moneo commissioned Paternosto for a pictorial intervention to the new arrivals hall of Atocha, the main rail station in Madrid.  The result echoes Paternosto’s side-painted canvases across a 170-foot span of steel.


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