This exceptionally rare, early work by the Uruguayan master Joaquín Torres-García stands out as an important precursor to his pioneering system of Constructive Universalism, which he consolidated in 1929, a year after the creation of this painting.

This visual language merges the quintessential constructive grid with pictographic symbols based on the art of ancient civilizations to create a visual language of universal reach. Formas depicts the rough, schematized figure of a man in deep earth tones standing behind a Doric column. With its extremely flat, frontal view, the artist merges abstraction with the subjective language of the natural world, while still using the underlying grid as the organizing principle. In this way, he humanizes Piet Mondrian and Theo van
Doesburg’s Neo-Plastic language, thus harmoniously balancing the intellectual, emotional, and earthly dimensions of humankind.

The work has a celebrated provenance as it once belonged in the collection of Francisco Matto, one of the key artists of the Torres-García Workshop.