Journeys of Julio Alpuy:
Pictographic Constructivm from the Workshop
of Torres-Garcia to New York City, 1943-1996

September 17 to October 16, 1997

This retrospective of Uruguayan painter and sculptor Julio Alpuy represents the first major New York exhibition of his work in over a decade. One of the most accomplished and respected artists to come out of Latin America's "School of the South," Alpuy developed his own variation of constructivism during the 1940s while working with the Uruguayan master Joaquin Torres-Garcia at his workshop, El Taller Torres-Garcia. By exploring the tension between the modernist grid and his own symbolic pictographs, Alpuy reorders and transforms nature into a highly personal yet recognizable visual idiom. He extends the concepts of Torres-Garcia though his understanding of modernist forms with an originality that suggests why he became a teacher in the workshop by the young age of 24.

The 45 paintings and sculptures presented in Journeys of Julio Alpuy: Pictographic Constructivism from the Workshop of Torres-Garcia to New York City, 1943-1996 provide an overview of Alpuy's entire oeuvre from 1943 to the present. They trace his journeys, both visual and geographic, from the defining grids characteristic of works from his days as a student and then a teacher at El Taller to the implied verticals and horizontals of Alpuy's narratives after his move to New York City in 1961.

Alpuy's long journey from Montevideo to New York City included travels throughout Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East during the 1950s as he refined his own variation of constructivism. These international travels helped to establish the universal language of landscapes, figures, and objects central to his visionary abstractions. A series of legendary narratives based on the story of Genesis demonstrate the originality of Alpuy's visual constructions.

Alpuy has exhibited in all of the group shows of the artists from El Taller; therefore this exhibition of his work continues the documentation of that school. However, he merits serious independent consideration both for his importance as a teacher within the circle of artists linked to Torres-Garcia and for his development as a visionary artist of great power and insight. Among the honors he has received since establishing his own studio in New York City are a fellowship from The New School for Social Research, a mural commission at the Uruguayan Embassy in Buenos Aires, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Council for the Arts, and the Gottlieb Foundation.

The exhibition runs from:
September 17 to October 16,1997
Baruch College's Sidney Mishkin Gallery
135 East 22 Street

Gallery hours are:
Monday-Friday, 12 noon to 5 p.m.
Thursday, 12 noon to 7 p.m.

Opening reception: September 16, 5-7 p.m.
Free and Open to the Public.
An exhibition catalog will be available.

© 1996 Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College