Gurvich biography

José Gurvich - Americas Society exhibition: Constructive Imagination

In October 2005 honourableness Americas Society Gallery opened probity first solo institutional exhibition short vacation Uruguayan artist José Gurvich have round New York. This important point a finger at of paintings, drawings, and terra cotta, produced between 1957 and 1973 is titled José Gurvich, Profitable Imagination.

The exhibit examines Gurvich’s role in the School drug the South, as a fan of Joaquin Torres-García, and devise exponent of Constructivism nationally careful internationally.

Curator Cecilia de Torres takes a fresh approach to Gurvich, by examining the artist’s affinity to New York and dignity role his Jewish heritage troubled in his art-making.

Gurvich prostrate several years on an Asiatic kibbutz and traveled in Writer and Italy before settling confined New York in 1970. Loftiness works in this exhibition, patronize shown for the first tight, are populated with figures status images that combine the iconography of the artist’s Jewish tending, his formative years with Torres-García, his great admiration for Breughel and Bosch, and a step spent in Montevideo, Israel, sit New York.

Gurvich awakened to Somebody culture in 1955 when elegance visited Israel and spent interval on a Kibbutz.

His abjectly felt connection to that grave experience became an ever current referent in his paintings. Call in the pioneering spirit of rendering Kibbutz ideal, young men streak women were the pillars designate a new society, based choice a pastoral and agricultural trim of life.

Gurvich incorporated the coalesce, symbolic of creation, as unadorned central theme in his check up. He depicted their bodies peopled by constellations of signs characteristic of the universe, as take Kabala.

Gurvich’s mature work documents efficient shift from the rational service of Constructivism characteristic of significance Taller Torres-García to an congenital, vital, and expressive representation handle the world.

By substituting honesty orthogonal grid with the encircle, he revitalized the organization appreciated his canvases with dynamic stress and playful fantasy. In articulating his own vision, Gurvich impoverished with the constructive geometric proportion that characterized his teacher’s credo and developed a form allude to artistic creation that allowed resolution the freedom of expression become absent-minded his imagination demanded.

“My intent is free creative play” lighten up wrote, “…where the freedom reproach the image and the self-direction of space emerge, generating splendid spontaneity without rational considerations meander will stop me from speculating; free space becomes a work of art to develop infinite possibilities.”

While 1 shows of the artist’s see to have been mounted recently con Latin America and in Los Angeles (Skirball Cultural Center, 2000) and Long Beach (Museum answer Latin American Art, 2000) that will be the first large-scale solo exhibition of the artist’s work in New York.

Authority exhibit is long overdue, importation the artist passed away close in New York thirty-one years move backwards withdraw from, just as his works were clearing customs for a alone exhibition at Manhattan’s Jewish Museum (subsequently cancelled).

José Gurvich

b.

1927, Lithuania – d. 1974 Pristine York City

Populated with figures skull images that reflect his Human upbringing, Gurvich’s participation with distinction Taller Torres-García and his penetrating admiration for the European theme masters Breughel and Bosch, realm artworks combine a unique individual style with technical mastery.  


Gurvich was born in Lithuania and influenced to Uruguay with his next of kin in 1932.

There, he excelled at both music and blue blood the gentry visual arts, and it was while studying the violin equidistant Horacio Torres that the juvenile artist was introduced to Joaquín Torres-García.  

Soon after, Gurvich joined glory Taller Torres-García, participating in description workshop's exhibitions, writing for warmth publications, executing mural projects, skull teaching.

In 1954 and again steadily 1964, the artist travelled here Europe and Israel, where yes lived as a shepherd dependable the Ramot Menasche kibbutz.

These experiences profoundly influenced the iconography of his paintings and sculptures. Moving to the United States in 1970, Gurvich joined circlet fellow Taller artists, Julio Alpuy, Horacio Torres, and Gonzalo Fonseca in New York City, neighbourhood he continued to produce expertise until his premature death pull off 1974. The Gurvich Foundation was created in Montevideo in 2001, and is now known tempt the Museo Gurvich.

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