…an exhibition at the MFAH this past summer (2008-09) mounted to fill an unexpected hole in the schedule, also curated in part by Ramírez, made an unexpected and, in a way, improbable case for Torres-García’s wider influence on the course of Latin American art. North Looks South: Building the Latin American Art Collection contained a single painting by Torres-García, Abstract Tubular Composition (1937). But that single painting hung with a number of works by the Brazilian Constructivists of the 1960s, and not far from the work of Venezuelans like Carlos Cruz-Diaz and Jesús Rafael Soto. The influence was evident. It is not too much of a stretch to say that Joaquín Torres-García occupies a place in the history of twentieth-century Latin American art akin to that of Picasso in European Modernism: he is the wellspring.
(via Joaquin Torres-García by John Devine | ART LIES: A Contemporary Art Quarterly)