Joaquin Torres-Garcia at Acquavella Galleries

Just two years after New York’s Museum of Modern Art held a major retrospective of Joaquin Torres-Garcia’s art, Acquavella Gallery has gotten a hold of the family’s collection of the Uruguayan painter’s art. 

The show, which opened late last week, contains a number of works that have been loaned to major museums in Europe and South America. This will be the first time the works have been presented as a whole.

This show represents the largest and most comprehensive survey in an American gallery since Joaquín Torres-García curated his own exhibition at The Sidney Janis Gallery in 1950.

At times treated as a Latin American artist, Torres-Garcia was a contemporary of—and mentor to—Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró. Born in Montevideo, raised in Barcelona, Torres-Garcia lived in New York and Paris during his long career. While in Paris he was inspired by indigenous art from the Americas, Africa, and Oceania which reinforced his vision of symbols and cosmic order. Through his career, he had strong relationships with a wide range of artists including Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Stuart Davis, Hans Arp, Wassily Kandinsky, Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian, and Kurt Schwitters.