Colour structure

Canvas, oil.

The Museum of Modern Art, New York (the USA).

While living in Paris, Torres Garcia met with Neoplasticist artists (Piet Mondrian and others) who were proponents of geometric abstraction as opposed to contemporary Surrealism. In accordance with this artistic trend, Torres Garcia began to use a strict geometric grid in his compositions as a means of preserving the two-dimensionality of the picture. The artist created all kinds of patterns on the canvas, dividing the surface into horizontal and vertical segments, each of which was painted in a different colour. Unlike teachers who believed in the “pure” quality of the grid, Torres Garcia emphasized the untreated aspect of the composition; he kept imperfections in the canvas visible, using different thicknesses of the paint layer and expressive tracing of strokes.