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Lot Essay
We are grateful to Mrs. Cecilia de Torres for her assistance in confirming the authenticity of this work; to be included in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné of the artist under archive number P 1929.44.
"As the painter Torres-García says, we must live within the universal," Theo van Doesburg wrote in 1929 of his friend, with whom he shared a commitment to the neo-plastic vision of a timeless and universal art.[1] Working in the international milieu of Paris between 1926 and 1932, Torres-García sought to translate an invisible, metaphysical order in paintings symbolically structured to embody an ideal harmony within the universe. Like van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian, Torres-García defined his mature pictorial language around the grid, whose linear and spatial relationships posited the oppositional relationships of the cosmos --male and female, material and spiritual, active and passive-- in dynamic and creative equilibrium. Neo-Plasticism offered the meticulous purity and spiritual transcendence that Torres-García sought as he transitioned out of his earlier neo-classical period, and his paintings from 1929 are the first to commit fully to the symbolic and intellectual abstractions of the grid.
Torres-García assimilated the neo-plastic values of order and structural harmony within an expansive humanistic worldview, and he drew on a multitude of ancient symbologies and mystical beliefs to imbue his works with deeper spiritual and emotional power. His affinity for the Golden Section, prevalent in his works beginning in 1929, underscores the metaphysical projections implied within his adaptation of the constructivist grid. A mathematical proportion known to have existed in the classical world, the Golden Section postulates that the subdivision of space into certain ratios connotes structural parallels with the universal cosmos. The aesthetic harmony believed to result from this mathematical ordering can be seen in the present work, in which the canvas rectangle is broken down into vertical and horizontal modules that describe a balanced and unified visual field. Less rigidly geometric than many of his later works, Dirigible has a flowing constructive rhythm that connects the eponymous airship with what appear to be abstracted landscape elements whose curving and wavy lines echo the shape of the ship floating above.
The incorporation of figurative motifs across the gridded spaces of his abstractions, as anticipated in the present work, marked the beginnings of a new, integral aesthetic that Torres-García would promote as Universal Constructivism following his return to Uruguay in April 1934. His schematic repertoire drew mainly from the realm of the age-old and universal --sun and stars, heart and home, ship and compass-- and thus Dirigible represents an exceptional instance in which Torres-García featured a distinctly modern icon within the grid. Dirigibles, epitomized by the classic German zeppelins of the early twentieth century, bespoke a futuristic vision of luxury travel and utopian design, and Torres-García capitalized on the modernity of the airship, imaging its sleek silhouette within a color-blocked geometric order. The striking palette of red, ocher, black, white, and gray has a strong graphic impact, and the juxtaposition of shapes gives the painting a tensile energy that stretches vertically, rising upward from ground to virtual sky, and horizontally, following the shape of the airship. Ships carry special significance in Torres-García's paintings, recurring often and evoking both the artist's own trans-Atlantic crossings and, in more cosmic sense, the allegorical voyage of life. In the present work, the airship bears similar symbolic weight as the more familiar nautical ship, conjuring associations of voyaging and discovery. A metaphorical means of transcending the material world and, no less, a nod to the technological present day, Torres-García's airship embodies the flux and continuity of the ancient and the modern, here reconciled in the most intimate and universal space of his canvas.
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park
1) Theo van Doesburg, "Torres-García's Planism," Torres-García: Grid-Pattern-Sign, Paris-Montevideo, 1924-1944 (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1985), 101.
"As the painter Torres-García says, we must live within the universal," Theo van Doesburg wrote in 1929 of his friend, with whom he shared a commitment to the neo-plastic vision of a timeless and universal art.[1] Working in the international milieu of Paris between 1926 and 1932, Torres-García sought to translate an invisible, metaphysical order in paintings symbolically structured to embody an ideal harmony within the universe. Like van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian, Torres-García defined his mature pictorial language around the grid, whose linear and spatial relationships posited the oppositional relationships of the cosmos --male and female, material and spiritual, active and passive-- in dynamic and creative equilibrium. Neo-Plasticism offered the meticulous purity and spiritual transcendence that Torres-García sought as he transitioned out of his earlier neo-classical period, and his paintings from 1929 are the first to commit fully to the symbolic and intellectual abstractions of the grid.
Torres-García assimilated the neo-plastic values of order and structural harmony within an expansive humanistic worldview, and he drew on a multitude of ancient symbologies and mystical beliefs to imbue his works with deeper spiritual and emotional power. His affinity for the Golden Section, prevalent in his works beginning in 1929, underscores the metaphysical projections implied within his adaptation of the constructivist grid. A mathematical proportion known to have existed in the classical world, the Golden Section postulates that the subdivision of space into certain ratios connotes structural parallels with the universal cosmos. The aesthetic harmony believed to result from this mathematical ordering can be seen in the present work, in which the canvas rectangle is broken down into vertical and horizontal modules that describe a balanced and unified visual field. Less rigidly geometric than many of his later works, Dirigible has a flowing constructive rhythm that connects the eponymous airship with what appear to be abstracted landscape elements whose curving and wavy lines echo the shape of the ship floating above.
The incorporation of figurative motifs across the gridded spaces of his abstractions, as anticipated in the present work, marked the beginnings of a new, integral aesthetic that Torres-García would promote as Universal Constructivism following his return to Uruguay in April 1934. His schematic repertoire drew mainly from the realm of the age-old and universal --sun and stars, heart and home, ship and compass-- and thus Dirigible represents an exceptional instance in which Torres-García featured a distinctly modern icon within the grid. Dirigibles, epitomized by the classic German zeppelins of the early twentieth century, bespoke a futuristic vision of luxury travel and utopian design, and Torres-García capitalized on the modernity of the airship, imaging its sleek silhouette within a color-blocked geometric order. The striking palette of red, ocher, black, white, and gray has a strong graphic impact, and the juxtaposition of shapes gives the painting a tensile energy that stretches vertically, rising upward from ground to virtual sky, and horizontally, following the shape of the airship. Ships carry special significance in Torres-García's paintings, recurring often and evoking both the artist's own trans-Atlantic crossings and, in more cosmic sense, the allegorical voyage of life. In the present work, the airship bears similar symbolic weight as the more familiar nautical ship, conjuring associations of voyaging and discovery. A metaphorical means of transcending the material world and, no less, a nod to the technological present day, Torres-García's airship embodies the flux and continuity of the ancient and the modern, here reconciled in the most intimate and universal space of his canvas.
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park
1) Theo van Doesburg, "Torres-García's Planism," Torres-García: Grid-Pattern-Sign, Paris-Montevideo, 1924-1944 (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1985), 101.