Uruguay: Torres García, Constructivism, and the School of the South

Uruguay, a small country with a rich cultural heritage, has given Latin American art one of its most influential figures: Joaquín Torres García (1874-1949). After decades in Europe, where he became involved with Surrealism and Constructivism, he returned to Montevideo in 1934 and founded the Torres García Workshop, where he trained generations of artists. His Constructive Universalism proposed an art based on geometry, universal symbols, and American roots: the famous Torres García Sun became an emblem of his own aesthetic. Rafael Barradas and Pedro Figari were pioneers of modernism. In recent decades, artists like Luis Camnitzer—Uruguayan-German—have addressed memory, exile, and politics through conceptual art. Uruguayan art is a school of visual thought from the Global South.

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