Joaquín Torres-García: Paintings in Houston Collections September 6, 2009–January 18, 2010

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Joaquín Torres-García was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century to have emerged from Latin America. He is revered not only as a Modernist painter, but also as a teacher and an author. Torres-García (1874–1949) spent most of his life in Spain, Italy, France, and New York before returning to Montevideo, Uruguay, his place of birth. In Montevideo, the artist founded the Taller Torres-García, a school that promoted avant-garde experimentation and sought to challenge the long-standing hierarchical distinctions between arts and crafts.

This exhibition brings together major paintings by the artist selected from local collections. Additionally, the presentation features five works from the Brillembourg Capriles Collection of Latin American Art at the MFAH, a major long-term loan addition to the museum’s Latin American holdings. These paintings vividly exemplify the diversity and multiplicity of solutions to which the artist arrived in his attempt to expand upon key issues posed by the early Constructivist and Abstract movements in Europe. Each work on view represents a different period of Torres-García’s production—ranging from an early landscape painted in France in 1928 to an oil on paper and canvas work made in 1945—giving viewers a broad overview of his career.