TORRES-GARCÍA. Between Noucentisme and the avant-gardes (1891-1934) at Sala Parés.

In order to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Joaquín Torres-García (1874-1949), The Sala Parés, in collaboration with the Torres García Museum of Montevideo and the Generalitat de Catalunya, is organizing an exhibition that brings together about a hundred and twenty works - including oils, works on paper, and toys - which are set in a broad chronological spectrum: from his arrival in Catalonia in 1891 to the early thirties.

The exhibition intertwines Torres-García's production from these four decades, key to understanding his evolution, as well as the genesis of constructive art. Thus, both in his eclectic work from the early years in which academic notes are combined with clear modernist influences, and in his extensive noucentista production that culminates in the decoration of the Saló de Sant Jordi - the sketches of which have been lent by the Generalitat de Catalunya for the exhibition - allow glimpsing a Torres-García in whose production a religious sentiment of art emerges beyond mere formal and aesthetic matters. This premise is essential to understand his adventure and research towards a synthetism that will open paths to new plastic solutions. The young Torres-García is a painter who explores, who experiments, who studies, but above all, is capable of building a personal art whose purpose is to connect with the essential order from perception and to express this order through his own artistic proposal. He states this in his Art Notes (1913): "In every superior work of art, the idea of each object, more than its reality or particularity, is what is essential... He sees, in color and form, the expression of that idea."

This same idea more evidently structures his proposal from 1917, the year in which he abandons the classical aesthetics linked to Noucentisme and connects with the avant-garde. Both the toys from c.1917-19 and the appearance of irregular grids in some of his works or the connections with futuristic approaches stand out as a gateway to the constructive art that he would later codify. Likewise, Torres-García's fascination with the modern city is widely represented in the exhibition, with compositions that are already fully modern, which, despite the themes, harbor this profound sense beyond the formal. These works correspond to both the final moments of Barcelona and the brief but highly significant periods experienced in New York (1920-1922) and Paris (1926-1932). It is precisely at the end of this decade of the twenties when his universal constructive art is defined.

It can be visited free of charge from Tuesday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.