Collectable

Our North is the South

Possible pedagogies. Back to school!

Joaquín Torres-García, 1924, Formas sobre fondo blanco

After living in Barcelona, New York, Italy, Paris and Madrid, when Joaquín Torres-García turned sixty he returned to Montevideo, the city where he was born and lived until he was seventeen. The year was 1934, and he wanted to promote Constructivism in South America. Passionate about this new modern aesthetic, his aim was to create a dialogue with the traditions of the southern world. In his ideology, he lauded the culture of the south, as he made clear in the 1935 conference entitled The School of the South, where he proclaimed: Our North is the South. Eight years later, in January 1943, the Torres-García Studio opened its doors at Abayubá 2763 in Montevideo. It did not follow any established method, but, similar to medieval or Renaissance studios, the students worked together with their teacher. A Cubist painting was interpreted alongside Nazca pottery from pre-Incan Peru. And everything that was done pointed to a profound understanding of the term abstraction. Although Torres-García died in 1949, the studio remained active until 1962. Beyond its physical space, it promoted a true School of the South.

Other works in the collection by Joaquín Torres-García

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