Joaquín Torres-García spent his life half chasing money, half chasing concepts; both of which are slippery buggers.

Torres-García appears to have inherited this double-quest from daddy-o, who dragged his kids halfway around the world to escape his debts (actually it’s more like ¼ of the way around from Montevideo to Barcelona but you get what I mean).

Joaquin bopped around the Northern hemisphere for 42 years, halfheartedly pursuing each portion of his two-headed mission. In his desire to make bank he started an art school for mural painting in Spain and a toy manufacturing business in Italy, both failed; he tutored students in drawing until marrying one student’s daughter; and took commissions from Anton Gaudi (looks great on résumés).

He simultaneously chased concepts around like a chicken with its head cut off. He dabbled in Catalan nationalism for a while until it developed an authoritarian tone, which was all the rage in the early 20th century. He exhibited with Société Anonyme in New York City and Cercle et Carré in Paris, he gave some lectures in Madrid, but kept getting bored with superficial styles and unresponsive students (hungover? on dope? kids these days...) and moving on to the next thing.

Eventually he returned to Montevideo where he declared Europe and colonialism officially dead, “If [writers, painters, or composers] didn’t learn the lessons of Europe when they should have done, too bad for them because the moment has passed.” Joaquin determined that the whole northern hemisphere was passé, he famously inverted the map of South America, hollered out “Our North is the South!” and flipped the bird to the European modernism with which he had come of age.

Having finally completed the concept half of his life’s journey with his discovery of “post-europe” he spent the rest of his life writing books about how great art was before that jerk Chris Columbus showed up and copying ancient symbols on stone plates and canvas. This tradition has survived three generations and will probably continue as long as MoMA continues to insist that TorresGarcía is the only Latin American artist that has ever existed.