Portrait of the artistJoaqun Torres Garca changed Uruguayan art foreverUpside-down maps, strange symbols in primary colours, fish out of water? If you have seen paintings containing any of the above recently, chances are that you have been in Montevideo.The man responsible was Joaqun Torres Garca, and he set in motion an artistic revolution. Torres Garca was born in the Uruguayan capital in 1874 and still in his teens emigrated to Barcelona with his family with the plan to learn to paint. His trademark style came to be constructivism, founded in part on the inclusion of indigenous elements in artworks. Despite the profusion of his work on posters, in coffee table books and even on mugs (if not on canvas: many of his paintings were destroyed in a fire in a Brazilian museum in 1979) it's a difficult style to pin down.