Joaquín Torres García

JOAQUÍN TORRES GARCÍA (Montevideo, Uruguay, 1874 - 1949).
"The pony go", c. 1922-24.
Oil on wood.
Work reproduced in the catalog raisonné no. T2.302 #.
Replica based on the plans of a lost original.
It has slight marks and dirt.
Provenance: Private collection, New York.
Measurements: 60,9 x 60,9 cm.
Exhibitions:
-2010-11., Avant-garde toys, October 2010 January 2011. Picasso Museum, Malaga.
Published references.
-IVAM 1998: Valencian Institute of Modern Art. Julio González Center, Aladdin toys, the toys of Torres García, Valencia: 1998. Exhibition catalog, p. 18. n 4.
-IVAM 1998-99: Childhood and modern art. Valencia, Spain: IVA; Julio González Center, 1998. Exhibition catalog (1998-99 IVAM). Ill. P. 53.
Replica based on the plans of a lost original that in Spain was known as Clavileño, although its international name was Pony go. It was a toy of traditional conception, and the most important in the American market, even in design. The originality of this model, far removed from educational references, lay in the mechanism patented by Torres García in New York, which made it possible to move the horse's legs and for the horse to move forward while preventing the rider from falling dangerously. In 1924, all the rocking horses were burned in a fire in the New York warehouse, and Torres García focused on other models. For Torres Garcia the marketing of his toys was as fundamental as designing and building them.
After beginning his training as a self-taught artist, in 1890 Torres García decided to emigrate in order to train as a painter. He traveled to Europe with his family the following year, at the age of seventeen. In 1892 he settled in Barcelona and entered the School of Fine Arts. There he came into contact with French impressionism, the main influence at that time for him and other famous students, such as Mir, Sunyer, Canals and Nonell. He also worked in decoration, a field in which his collaboration with Antoni Gaudí in the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca stands out. Around 1910 he began to introduce formal elements typical of Catalonia into his work, imbued with the spirit of vindication of the Catalan identity of the time. Several official commissions are related to this new approach, among which the mural decoration of the Salón de Sant Jordi at the headquarters of the Diputación Provincial de Barcelona stands out as a turning point in his career. In 1920 he moved to New York and came into contact with artists of the stature of Max Weber, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp. Soon after he returned to Europe and settled in Paris, where he frequented the meetings of the group led by Mondrian, thus approaching abstraction and constructivism. In 1934 he finally decided to return to Montevideo, where he was received as a member of the European artistic elite. There he created the Society of the Arts of Uruguay, whose aim was to integrate all the arts and act as a link between artists and the public. He came into contact with pre-Columbian and indigenous Uruguayan art, and this aesthetic, new to him, would have a crucial influence on his thinking. He claimed that artists did not need to renounce being Latin American by pretending to be contemporary, and he brought a new dimension to the construction of the modern American language. Moreover, from this moment on, the cultural symbology of his own land took on a decisive importance in his work. His work is preserved in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the Modern Art Museums of New York, San Francisco and Lille, the Reina Sofia National Museum, the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Torres Garcia Museum of Montevideo, the Fine Arts Museums of Houston, Philadelphia and Santa Barbara, the National Museum of Fine Arts of São Paulo, the Hirshhorn and Art of the Americas Museums of Washington DC, the Albright-Knox Gallery of Buffalo and the Los Angeles County Museum, among others.