Torres Garcia Museum, Uruguay

Born in the city of Montevideo in 1874, to a Catalan father and a Uruguayan mother, Joaquín Torres García grew up on the outskirts of the city in an environment of great freedom. His school education was self-taught and his vocation for art was spontaneous and unprecedented in a family of merchants and carpenters. Convinced that his destiny is to be a painter, the young Torres convinces his father to return to his native country, and in 1891 the entire family emigrates to Barcelona. Upon settling in the town of his ancestors, Joaquín is impressed to discover the presence of the ancient Mediterranean culture in daily life. He completed a brief academic artistic training, and then resumed his self-taught path. To earn a living he begins to work as an illustrator for magazines and books. From his early years Torres García rejected painting that tries to imitate reality, and tends towards painting that constructs a reality in itself. Thus, in the first decade of the century he created his “Mediterranean Art”, where classical antiquity comes to life in a modern key due to its strong structure and flat and synthetic character. In those years Torres dedicated himself to mural art, decorating churches, private homes and public buildings. Starting in 1916, in a context of world war and social upheavals, Torres García experienced a vital and artistic change that has been called “the crisis of 17”. The city, the people and the river…

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