Joaquin Torres-Garcia

Joaquin Torres-Garcia (1874-1949) was a Spanish-Uruguayan painter and theorist whose Constructive Universalism became one of the most influential currents in twentieth-century Latin American art. Working across Barcelona, Madrid, New York and finally Montevideo, he founded or co-founded a succession of schools and groups, including Cercle et Carre, described as the first European abstract-art group, and the Taller Torres-Garcia. His mature paintings arrange pictograms, figures reduced to sign-like forms, inside grids of geometric compartments, reflecting his belief that geometry functions as a universal visual language.