El Taller Torres-Garcia: The School Of The South And Its Legacy

El Taller Torres-Garcia: The School of the South and Its Legacy

Considered the most significant art educational community of its time (1944-1962) Torres-Garcia combined, in the tradition of the Bauhaus and de Stijl, the philosophy of the European avant-garde into an integrated arts school whose primary purpose was to develop a truly Latin American artistic language based on constructivist theories. The members of the Taller produced a significant body of work that included painting, sculpture, ceramics, wood and iron reliefs, murals, and architectural projects. This publication and the exhibit it accompanies constitute the first attempt to reconstruct the history and philosophy of El Taller Torres-Garcia and the principal artists who participated in it. The catalog features four major essays on various aspects of the Taller and its legacy by Cecilia Torres, Jacqueline Barnitz, Juan Flo, and Mari Carmen Ramirez. It also includes a complete chronology of the Taller, in-depth biographical sketches of the major artists, a selection of previously unpublished texts by Torres-Garcia and others, a bibliography, and a checklist of works in the exhibit. Beautiful color and black-and-white photographs complement the text. Mari Carmen Ramirez is curator of Latin American art at the Archer M Huntington Art Gallery.