Biography
1874-1891
Joaquín Torres-García was born on July 28, 1874, in Montevideo, Uruguay, to Joaquín Torras i Fradera, an immigrant from Catalonia, Spain, who had arrived in Uruguay in 1865 as a young man, and María García.
In 1891, Torres emigrated to Mataró, Catalonia (Spain), joining his father on a return to his homeland. He attended a local artist studio -Vinardell- where he painted for the first time in oil. He also studied at the ‘Escuela Municipal de Artes y Oficios’ -(Academy of Arts and Crafts)- of Mataró for eight months.
Soon after, the family moved to Barcelona. He enrolled at the Escola d'Art i Oficis de la Llotja (School of Fine Arts) and the Academia Baixas. His studio became the nucleus of friends —young artists, musicians, and writers. In his early years, Torres focused on drawing the human figure from life. This period produced a series of charcoal and pencil works—nudes, street scenes, historical figures, and self-portraits—marked by firm, thick, and overlapping lines. Torres began illustrating books and magazines—work that was increasingly in demand and earned him a living and critical recognition. The experience led him to transform narrative into symbolic drawings, developing a visual language derived from the text.
1900-1905
At the turn of the century, Torres moved away from the decorative, poster-like style, increasingly focusing on composition. Balancing a palette of warm colors, his work evolved into a planar style, emphasizing the suppression of depth. Torres worked on a flat surface, orchestrating an almost Euclidean interplay of lines, forms, colors, and rhythms. Whether working in a figurative or representational style, like the old masters, or in a purely non-objective mode, like the modernists, Torres consistently conveyed a sense of geometric abstraction in his art.
In 1902, Torres worked on a commission from Gaudí to design stained glass windows for Palma de Mallorca Cathedral. A new technique known as “trichromy”—invented by Gaudí—was used, involving the layering of three panes of glass in primary colors. Through this project, Torres learned to work with a palette of red, yellow, and blue. By 1905, a rose window and two vertical stained-glass panels were installed on either side of the Gothic apse.
1905-1910
Torres-García made mural painting his primary activity, working with the classical orthogonal grid and a canon of human proportions. He was commissioned to create decorations for the modernist mansion Torre del Campanar (the Campanile Tower House) in Barcelona, as well as for L’Església de Sant Agustí (Church of Saint Augustine), where he painted three large works representing the Communion of the Apostles, each inscribed with texts by Thomas Aquinas. For the Comissió d'Hisenda del Ayuntamiento de Barcelona (Finance Committee of the Barcelona City Council), he produced four large panels depicting scenes of modern life. He took charge of the art department at the progressive Mont d'Or school, founded by his friend Palau Vera. The first examples of transformable toy sculptures—that Torres-García would later call Joguines d’Art (Art Toy—began to emerge as a result of this pedagogical approach.
In 1909 he marries Manuela Piña de Rubies. They traveled to Paris and Brussels, where he painted two murals for the Uruguayan pavillion in the Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles 1910 (The Brussels International Exposition).
Manolita Piña de Rubíes with a goat in the garden of her family’s home in Barcelona. c.1906 photo by her brother Jaime Piña de Rubíes.
Filosofía Xª musa (Philosophy Xª muse) 1911 Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.
Joaquín Torres-García and Manolita Piña de Rubíes, first photograph taken after celebrating their marriage in 1909.
1911-1912
Torres-García made mural painting his primary activity, working with the classical orthogonal grid and a canon of human proportions. He was commissioned to create decorations for the modernist mansion Torre del Campanar (the Campanile Tower House) in Barcelona, as well as for L’Església de Sant Agustí (Church of Saint Augustine), where he painted three large works representing the Communion of the Apostles, each inscribed with texts by Thomas Aquinas. For the Comissió d'Hisenda del Ayuntamiento de Barcelona (Finance Committee of the Barcelona City Council), he produced four large panels depicting scenes of modern life. He took charge of the art department at the progressive Mont d'Or school, founded by his friend Palau Vera.
In 1909 he marries Manuela Piña de Rubies. They traveled to Paris and Brussels, where he painted two murals for the Uruguayan pavillion in the Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles 1910 (The Brussels International Exposition).
1912-1918
