La Escuela del Sur magazine was published by the TTG (Taller Torres García). The first issue appeared in 1958, five years after Removedor—the Taller’s previous journal—ceased publication. The article “Salutación a Torres García,” written by the celebrated Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro, was originally published in the weekly newspaper Marcha (Montevideo, October 6, 1944), the same year in which Huidobro started the magazine Actual in Chile, the latest of his publishing ventures. The article is of interest for its testimonial nature; it is a letter of support for the Uruguayan maestro, written by a very prestigious intellectual who was an old friend of JTG’s from when they were both living in Paris (1930–31).   

In the early years of the twentieth century Vicente Huidobro (1893–1948) was involved in a variety of activities that led him to forge close ties with the French avant-garde and the groups of Spanish and Argentinean intellectuals who formed the “ultraísta” movement. In his Historia de mi vida, Joaquín Torres García remembers the Chilean poet with particular fondness, and describes him, and the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz (1891–1973), as the kind of “friends you never forget.” Referring to Huidobro, JTG wrote: “a fan of Torres’ work, just as Torres is of his poetry; a poetry of truth among so much pseudo poetry, a man of all the avant-gardes and an admirable theorist” (Historia de mi vida, pp. 286–87). Huidobro’s relationships with the Surrealists ranged from friendship to enmity; he was a scholar of astrology and the occult in general, which JTG found especially interesting during the years he spent in Paris when he became interested in theosophy. This article was published in 1944, when the TTG had painted murals at the Hospital Saint Bois and JTG was being harshly attacked by several groups in Uruguay.

[As complementary reading see, in the ICAA digital archive, the following articles written by Joaquín Torres García: “Con respecto a una futura creación literaria” (730292); “Lección 132. El hombre americano y el arte de América” (832022); “Mi opinión sobre la exposición de artistas norteamericanos: contribución” (833512); “Nuestro problema de arte en América: lección VI del ciclo de conferencias dictado en la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de Montevideo” (731106); “Introducción [en] Universalismo Constructivo” (1242032); “Sentido de lo moderno [en Universalismo Constructivo]” (1242015); “Bases y fundamentos del arte constructivo” (1242058); and “Manifiesto 2, Constructivo 100%” (1250878)].