Muchacha de Nueva York [New York Girl]

Technique

Tempera on paper

Dimensions

Paper size: 28 × 23 cm
Frame size: 58.5 x 50.9 x 4 cm

Inventory

FM000330

Description

Joaquín Torres-García was born in Uruguay, yet his father was Catalan, and the family had settled first in Mataró, in 1891, and the following year in BarcelonaThere, he began his studies at the School of Fine Arts, along with Isidro Nonell, Joaquín Mir, Canals and Sunyer. He then came into contact with the Modernist group that would meet at the tavern Els Quatre Gats. His artistic career, however, would follow other paths more closely aligned with the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc, under whose influence he transformed his elegant and ornate Modernist drawing style into a new search for the pure and timeless forms of classicism.   His work caught the attention of Eugenio d’Ors, who considered Torres-García to be one of the clearest representatives of the Noucentisme that he was encouraging in the visual arts.  

However, in 1917, Torres-García’s classicism underwent a crisis. Subsequently, a new period began in which contact with fellow Uruguayan Rafael Barradas would result in a shift in his own compositions. This change was defined by a focus on modernity, the description of the complexity of urban life, and, ultimately, the echoes of Cubism and Futurism which Barradas was developing and calling “Vibrationism”. 

In his work, Joaquín Torres-García began adapting the fragmentation of planes and forms to a greater structural necessity, according to an evolutionary process that would lead him to develop his own interpretation of Constructivism. 

In 1920, Joaquín Torres-García, his wife and children left Barcelona for Paris. On July 5th, they boarded a ship in Le Havre en route to New York. There, the painter was fascinated by the industrial landscape and hectic pace of Manhattan. This led to a series of oil paintings, loose drawings and watercolor albums containing studies of workers, pedestrians, vehicles, streets and buildings. 

 This drawing of the head of a young woman was made during his time in New York, which lasted only until the middle of 1922. 

As in the New York albums, Torres-García demonstrates a nimble and fluid drawing technique based on synthetic and assured lines, the result of his skillfulness as a draughtsman and illustrator which he had proven already in Barcelona at the beginning of the century.  Here, the model presents a straight Greek-like profile, which stands out sharply against an ink wash background.   Its classical power is softened by the rich color, dark wavy hair, highly ornate print and, we might say, the very “stylish” hat:  an article of clothing that lends her grace and characterizes her as an elegant young woman, possibly in sports attire, and a member of affluent American society.  

The drawing shares similarities with others made at the time, as well as with prints in the albums, descriptive but simple compositions consisting of bright colors whose assured lines capture the pulse of modern city life.   A connection can also be made between this female head consisting of pure lines and the classicist representations from his Noucentisme period, the features of which reappear in Torres-García’s painting for a brief period after his departure from New York and during his time in Italy.  

[Carmen Bernárdez Sanchís]