Círculo y Cuadrado

Círculo y Cuadrado (Circle and Square) was an art group and journal of the same name founded by the painter Joaquín Torres-García in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1936 as a Spanish-language continuation of the Paris group Cercle et Carré. Having returned to his homeland after decades in Europe, Torres-García sought to establish abstract and constructive art in Latin America and to gather pupils around himself within the Association of Constructive Art that he created. At the core of his teaching was "Universal Constructivism"—an original synthesis of Mondrian's Neo-Plasticism, Cubism, and the symbolism of ancient American cultures, notably the art of the Incas and pre-Columbian civilisations. The journal Círculo y Cuadrado promoted the idea of a structured, grid-based composition filled with pictographic signs embodying universal concepts. Through this group and his workshop, Torres-García trained an entire generation of Uruguayan and Latin American modernists, and it became one of the most influential centres of constructive art in the southern hemisphere.