# Manolita Piña

Manolita Piña Torres-Garcia (née Rubies 24 February 1883 – 11 June 1994) was a Spanish-Uruguayan painter and supercentenarian. She was known as "Doña Manolita" in Uruguay.
Piña Torres was the wife of Uruguayan painter Joaquín Torres García. Considered an "inseparable companion" to Torres García, she accompanied him to conferences, exhibitions and supported all of his artistic endeavors. In many ways, Piña Torres was "like his shadow." She was the founder of Museo Torres Garcia in Montevideo.

## Biography

Piña Torres was born in Barcelona, Spain, on 24 February 1883. Piña Torres was classically educated by her wealthy parents and she played piano into her late years.
She married Joaquín Torres García on 20 August 1908 in Barcelona. She and her husband lived throughout Europe as well as New York City in the United States, and then settled in Montevideo.
Piña Torres's art, along with her husband's, has been collected by Emilio Ellena. Ellena describes her art as creative and beautiful, but Piña Torres stopped painting after she was married. Piña Torres states that she stopped painting so that she would not become a better painter than her husband or disturb his work, which would have been shameful to their family during her time and in her culture. She felt that although she had stopped painting herself, that her opinion on art was always welcome. She may have continued to do some art, since there is a record of a master quality woodcut in a book, Notes on Art by Torres Garcia (1913).
She says that politics were one of the few things she argued about with her husband. She was known to help artists who were suffering from political persecution. Two of her grandchildren were imprisoned and in exile and her home was searched for them. Piña Torres also refused to move back to Barcelona because of the crimes against art that were committed there, such as destroying frescoes. She died at the age of 111 and has a death date of June 11th, 1994, which made her the oldest person in Uruguay at that time.

## Legacy

In 1951, Piña Torres created a group in Montevideo, called MAOTIMA (standing for the names of the participants, Manolita, Otilia, Iphigenia and Maria Angelica) which was dedicated to working on embroidered tapestries.
Piňa Torres was a tireless collector of her husband's work and later helped promote much of his formerly unseen art. She also inventoried his work, a list of over 350 pieces of art. Piña Torres felt that after her husband's death, she should ensure his legacy and therefore created a museum dedicated to her husband's art and legacy which she accomplished at age 106. Piña Torres set up the foundation to support the Museo Torres Garcia and helped found the museum which was initially opened on 29 July 1953. The museum went through a long, difficult history until the government of Uruguay stabilized and the museum was inaugurated in its current form in 1986. Piña Torres was credited for the enthusiasm and strength of her work towards the museum's creation. In addition to creating the foundation and the museum, she also set up an archive to document his life's work. She was often a subject of portraiture for her husband and the subject of others' paintings, as well, including work by artist Rafael Barradas.
She was posthumously honored in 2000 by the Cultural Center Foundation, Caixa Terrassa.