By Jeff Britton
SDUN Arts Reporter

The first things you notice when you enter the Joaquin Torres-Garcia exhibit at the San Diego Museum of Art are some whimsical children’s toys made of wood. Those toys were the prototype for more elaborate wood sculptures, known as “maderas,” which would mark the Uruguayan artist as one of the pioneers of abstract expressionism.

After his formative years in Montevideo and later Barcelona, where his family moved in 1891, it was the desire to manufacture wood toys that led Torres-Garcia to New York in 1920. The following year he exhibited at the Whitney Studio Club, where his paintings of cityscapes in a flat geometric mode were attracting a big following among New York’s affluent art patrons.

But it is his maderas that represent the bulk of the current exhibit, organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and presented jointly with SDMA. Devoid of explicit forms yet highly seductive, the abstract maderas remain some of the most puzzling and bewildering works Torres-Garcia ever conceived.

Pardon the pun, but these wooden objects indicate a man who thought outside the box. “You must construct OBJECTS THINGS. UNCLASSIFIABLE … not extravagant things, your things … NATURALLY AND HUMBLY,” he wrote in his memoirs, with great emphasis on certain words as if he were pounding out a theme.

As a result, there’s a simple unfinished quality to these rough-hewn structures painted with a tantalizing variety of muted colors. Many are marked “untitled” and come from prestigious museums around the world as well as private collections. They all have in common a devotion to abstract mode.

Torres-Garcia refused to succumb to the slick art that was fashionable from artists celebrating machines by drawing very straight lines and weeding out imperfections. “Machines dehumanize us,” he asserted. He goes the other way and is as much a cobbler as a sculptor – for example, many of the maderas depicting humans have nails to suggest eyes.

Perhaps the most intense period of his artistic life was when he lived in France and Italy. The Circle and Square group he founded with Michel Seuphor consisted of 50 artists in Paris with names such as Picasso, Mondrian and Schwitters.

Torres-Garcia’s talents were apparent in other media. In 1903 he assisted Antoni Gaudi with stained-glass windows for the cathedral at Palma de Mallorca and later with the windows for the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

While in Paris, he also developed an interest in pre-Columbian objects, whose influence is apparent in this show. Undoubtedly that interest prompted his return to Uruguay in 1934 where he lived the last 15 years of his life founding art associations and teaching.

Perhaps a noteworthy parallel is the timing of this retrospective during the worst recession since the Great Depression. In the 1930s, Torres-Garcia was convinced that the world was at its most decadent largely to the indifference of the rich. What might he think of our current economic mess?

What makes this so enticing is its accessibility to young and old alike, as well as art sophisticates and just plain folks looking for some beauty in a unique format. The abstract works lend themselves to universal appreciation.

He always manages to infuse a human element into these abstractions—here a face or eyes, or the profile of a sitting man. Primitive markings on other objects suggest ancient myths of indigenous tribes in South America.

Maybe it’s his use of neoplasticism, which he adapted from Mondrian and van Doesburg to form a new three-dimensional concept for grids and planes made of wood. Torres-Garcia expands on Mondrian’s style by introducing a subject superimposed on the abstraction. All the time, nothing in life seems very serious in this world of fascinating shapes.

Since the 1980s a series of exhibitions in Spain, France and England has explored this artist’s extraordinary accomplishments. In the United States, however, the Uruguayan master remains an underexposed and underappreciated figure.

The exhibit continues through May 30 at the San Diego Museum of Art, 1450 El Prado, Balboa Park. For more information go to sdmart.org or call 232-7931.