Joaquín Torres-García

Modern art from Latin American is still underappreciated in the United States. MoMA, however, was a pioneer in promoting modernists from the region, and this look back at the work of Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres-García (1874–1949) certainly fits in that tradition. One of South America’s most important figures, Torres-García developed a style indebted to Klee, Magritte, Míro and Mondrian. His paintings in particular distilled these disparate influences into overall compositions featuring geometric forms and flattened figurative outlines arranged in syncopated patterns. His subjects included cityscapes, which were sometimes reduced to surreal jumbles of glyphs, or empty compartmentalized niches. Surreal and timeless as tomb paintings, Torres-García's work certainly deserve admittance into the MoMA canon.