Intertwining art history, aesthetic theory, and Latin American studies, Aarnoud Rommens challenges contemporary Eurocentric revisions of the history of abstraction through this study of the Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres-García. After studying and painting (for decades) in Europe, Torres-García returned in 1934 to his native home, Montevideo, with the dream of reawakening and revitalizing what he considered the true indigenous essence of Latin American art: "Abstract Spirit." Rommens rigorously analyses the paradoxes of the painter's aesthetic-philosophical doctrine of Constructive Universalism as it sought to adapt European geometric abstraction to the Americas. Whereas previous scholarship has dismissed Torres-García's theories as self-contradictory, Rommens seeks to recover their creative potential as well as their role in tracing the transatlantic routes of the avant-garde. Through the highly original method of reading Torres-García's artworks as a critique on the artist's own writings, Rommens reveals how Torres-García appropriates the colonial language of primitivism to construct the artificial image of "pure" pre-Columbian abstraction. Torres-García thereby inverts the history of art: this book teases out the important lessons of this gesture and the implications for our understanding of abstraction today.

Joaquín Torres-García (Uruguayan, 1874-1949) is one of the most complex and emblematic modern masters from the first half of the 20th century, whose work determined transformational paths for modern art on both sides of the Atlantic. Manifesting a profound impulse toward the avant-garde as much as the primitive, and stressing a schematic impulsion alongside a permanent fascination with the notion of utopia, he participated in some of the most crucial intellectual and artistic discussions of the past century. His personal involvement with a significant number of early Modern and avant-garde movements, from Catalan Noucentismo to Cubism, Ultraism- Vibrationism, and Neo-Plasticism, make him an unparalleled figure in the history of modernism in the Americas. Published in conjunction with the first major, all-inclusive retrospective of the artist's work in the US since the 1970s, this richly illustrated publication presents Torres-García's long and wide-ranging career, from the late 19th century to the 1940s, and includes drawings, paintings, objects and sculptures. Combining a chronological presentation with a thematic approach, the book is organized into five separate essays with interspersed plates, following an illustrated chronology and an extensive bibliography.

In the twentieth century, avant-garde artists from Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean created extraordinary and highly innovative paintings, sculptures, assemblages, mixed-media works, and installations. This innovative book presents more than 250 works by some seventy of these artists (including Gego, Joaquin Torres-Garcia, Xul Solar, and Jose Clemente Orozco) and artists' groups, along with interpretive essays by leading authorities and newly translated manifestoes and other theoretical documents written by the artists. Together the images and texts showcase the astonishing artistic achievements of the Latin American avant-garde. The book focuses on two decisive periods: the return from Europe in the 1920s of Latin American avant-garde pioneers; and the expansion of avant-garde activities throughout Latin America after World War II as artists expressed their independence from developments in Europe and the United States. As the authors explain, during these periods Latin American art was fueled by the belief that artistic creations could present a form of utopia - an inversion of the original premise that drove the European avant-garde - and serve as a model for

Intertwining art history, aesthetic theory, and Latin American studies, Aarnoud Rommens challenges contemporary Eurocentric revisions of the history of abstraction through this study of the Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres-García. After studying and painting (for decades) in Europe, Torres-García returned in 1934 to his native home, Montevideo, with the dream of reawakening and revitalizing what he considered the true indigenous essence of Latin American art: "Abstract Spirit." Rommens rigorously analyses the paradoxes of the painter's aesthetic-philosophical doctrine of Constructive Universalism as it sought to adapt European geometric abstraction to the Americas. Whereas previous scholarship has dismissed Torres-García's theories as self-contradictory, Rommens seeks to recover their creative potential as well as their role in tracing the transatlantic routes of the avant-garde. Through the highly original method of reading Torres-García's artworks as a critique on the artist's own writings, Rommens reveals how Torres-García appropriates the colonial language of primitivism to construct the artificial image of "pure" pre-Columbian abstraction. Torres-García thereby inverts the history of art: this book teases out the important lessons of this gesture and the implications for our understanding of abstraction today.

Joaqu�n Torres-Garc�a (1874-1949) is one of the most influential artists to have emerged from Latin America in the early 20th century. His unique innovations in the medium of wood--constructed three-dimensional grids and planes known as maderas--foreshadow later artistic developments in Europe and the Americas (such as the work of Louise Nevelson). Torres-Garc�a was also much celebrated for his work as a modernist painter, teacher, and author. This handsome catalogue focuses on Torres-Garc�a’s wood constructions and accompanies the first exhibition held in North America of these works and the first solo exhibition of the artist in the United States in over forty years. It includes essays by prominent scholars that discuss the creation of the maderas and their place in the debates surrounding abstract art in Paris in the late 1920s and early 1930s and in Montevideo, his hometown in Uruguay, in the late 1930s and 40s. It also includes newly translated writings by the artist.

"Shows that precolumbian tectonic forms (especially as found in sculpture and weaving) appear to be an overlooked source, or anticipation, of much of the art of the 20th century. Second part of book deals with artifacts as American art and addresses reception of ancient tectonics in the 20th century. Emphasizes intense relationship that some members of the New York School (particularly Barnett Newman and Adolph Gottlieb) had during 1940s with the aboriginal arts of the North American part of the hemisphere and thus the affinities between their work and the work of the older Torres Garcâia in Montevideo, at the other end of the continent"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

The Spatiality of the Hispanic Avant-Garde: Ultraísmo & Estridentismo, 1918-1927 is a thorough exploration of the meanings and values Hispanic poets and artists assigned to four iconic locations of modernity: the city, the cafés, means of transportation, and the sea, during the first decades of the 20th century. Joining important studies on Spatiality, Palomares-Salas convincingly argues that an unsolvable tension between place and space is at the core of the Hispanic avant-garde cultural production. A refreshing, transatlantic perspective on Ultraism and Stridentism, the book moves the Hispanic vanguards forward into broader, international discussions on space and modernism, and offers innovative readings of well-known, as well as rarely studied works.