While in Montevideo, Joaquín Torres García did not grow weary, especially in the thirties, to make known his appreciation for the work from artists such as [Georges] Vantongerloo, [Piet] Mondrian (the most controversial of all ), [Theo] Van Doesburg and also by the Russian constructivists groups. In 1931, Joaquín Torres García had met Vasarely in Paris, when he was creating publication graphics and his name came to resonate in some of his Montevidean conferences. The anonymous article “A propósito de Vasarely” (Regarding Vasarely), published by the TTG (Taller Torres García [Torres Garcia Workshop]) in 1958, due to the exhibition by the French-Hungarian artist in Montevideo and may have been written by Guido Castillo or Guillermo Fernández. The text would have it appear that Vasarely’s assumptions were also those of the Joaquín Torres García group. However, beyond its initial respect, the note criticized Vasarely’s “spatial illusionism” and optics, leaving clear the distances that separate both artists, not only from the doctrines preached by Joaquín Torres García, but also from the work of Mondrian, placed by the followers as a constructivism at a much higher level than what in Paris was called “cold abstraction” or geometric abstraction. Joaquín Torres García dedicated his book Estructura to Piet Mondrian. The article emphasized that the path to constructive universalism was not the optical illusion of Vasarely nor was it the anarchistic graphics of Tachisme Art.” The TTG asserts and affirms, on the other hand, the humanist sense of that great tradition and of an art that is based on universal and extratemporal principles.
