He was born in Cerro Chato (Tacuarembó, Uruguay) on January 29, 1919.

He was a sculptor, painter and engraver.  He is one of the most conspicuous representatives of the School of the South and of Constructive Universalism and an original creator of woods and reliefs in his own language. He belonged to a very humble home and had little formal education before meeting Joaquín Torres García. When he met Torres García he had only seen one exhibition in his life, by chance and without previous preparation: it was an exhibition by José Cúneo in which he spent an entire afternoon. Thanks to that experience he bought pencils, crayons, Indian ink and paper, and he started to draw incessantly, locked in his room, without showing his work to anyone; he did it in a very naïve way, in a solitary way, after long days of work and study, and without thinking about art as a profession: it was a way of reflecting his dazzle before the exhibition and an imperative expressive need. It was only much later, and thanks to his contact with Torres García, that he began to conceive of himself as an artist.

In 1950 he travelled to Buenos Aires and completed several albums of notes on the city in ink and watercolour. Julio Alpuy joined the classes of Joaquín Torres García (1874-1949) in 1940, before the creation of the Torres García Workshop (TTG). He joined a group of enthusiastic young people with creative interests but without previous training and became one of the most devoted, unconditional and faithful supporters of the master in those classes held in Abayubá Street (Montevideo, Uruguay). He has a wide creative series within the language of Constructive Universalism.

After the death of Torres García in 1949, Alpuy continued on the path of the Workshop, although it was not long before he began to walk a personal path. In the process of his autonomous search, he had to free himself from excessive admiration for his teacher, from dependence on the TTG and from the clan spirit that prevailed in the group.

Alpuy's initiatives to achieve a language of his own were stimulated by a series of trips in the 1950s which culminated in his definitive departure from Uruguay. Between 1951 and 1953 he travelled to Europe and the Near East, in 1957 he travelled to Chile and then to Bogotá, settling in Colombia, where he lived from 1957 to 1959; then he settled in Venezuela for a year and finally left for New York (1961).

He was in search of a personal path; he had the feeling of living in a laboratory, especially during his stay in Bogota (Colombia). The change of culture, the confrontation with other customs, the meeting with students and professors of the School of Fine Arts, predisposed him to a greater opening to new languages. The city of Bogota was, then, a particularly inciting environment, since it had the presence of Argentine critic and cultural agitator Martha Traba, who lived in Colombia between 1954 and 1969, radically transforming the artistic environment through a fruitful career in teaching, museums, journalism and television.

The first noticeable changes in her language took place in Colombia and were constituted by the evasion of orthogonality, the dialogue with a sort of neo-Cubist language, the elevation of the palette, the use of colors alien to the tradition of the Workshop (fascination with intense yellows, blues and greens) and the development of a compositional approach generated with multiple vanishing points, and the use of diagonals. In this way Alpuy felt immersed in a process of metamorphosis.

Despite the stimulating climate that surrounded him in Colombia and his Venezuelan experience, he was afraid of becoming entrenched; he thought that by moving to cosmopolitan cities like Paris or New York he would get new impulses. He finally decided on New York (USA) when he obtained a scholarship from the New Chol of Social, he considered that there were particularly favorable conditions for creative development there. Perhaps it was an incentive to know that in that city he could count on the presence of his colleague and friend Gonzalo Fonseca, another member of the TTG, who had been living in New York since 1957.

When he arrived in New York (USA), Alpuy was dazzled by the variety of exhibitions and museums; he was fascinated by the possibility of freedom and autonomy, and not having to depend on a narrow circle. Although he maintained friendships with Latin American artists and with members of the TTG such as Gonzalo Fonseca, who lived in New York or resided there temporarily, as was the case with Augusto Torres and, in the early seventies, with José Gurvich.

He was also fascinated by the city and, since he had solid experience in urban landscaping, he began by painting the New York scenes, creating several paintings with that theme. But then he questioned that position and, as he says, went through a period of anguish; finally he found a new stimulus during a stay with Fonseca in East Hampton, in a natural setting, and in a residence that had a barn with all kinds of tools and natural materials.

Changing the material was fundamental to finding the new path. "That was the way out," he said. He adopted wood as a support and decided to go into relief. The other important decision was to move away from the urban: "I was looking outwards and decided to look inwards," says Alpuy. Then he began to explore another theme.

Such was the dazzle that he stopped painting large canvases and abandoned oil painting, dedicating himself almost exclusively to incised wood for thirteen years, although it should not be forgotten that as part of this process, he developed the forms in tempera, watercolors and numerous drawings.

The 1960s was a particularly fertile time for Alpuy, as it was through woodworking that it reached that unique path that it had been looking for so hard. It was a golden era in his career and he created, especially between 1962 and 1969, a remarkable series of reliefs that are among the highlights of his production, they speak of a primeval world, of the genesis, of the earth, of the universal couple, of the cosmos, of the love of nature.

From 1969 onwards, the artist began to approach his subjects in a different way, especially in the reliefs: he sweetened the forms, began to use a softer palette and progressively increased the figurative representation. Later this approach would be projected in the painting.

After the wood, watercolor and drawing stage in the 1960s, Alpuy returned to painting, while at the same time tackling other techniques without completely abandoning wood. The change took place in 1975 and this trend continues to this day. His paintings are dominated by images of couples, nature and scenes from Eden. It is a more explicit and narrative painting, less suggestive, in which the themes are easily evident. The Garden of Eden occupies an important place in it: naturalistic figures enclosed in enveloping forms and the human couple repeating themselves over and over again in the same composition.

The woman, a subject that he used to approach in an abstract way, appears in a very explicit way, both in paintings and in drawings and watercolours and, fundamentally, in the series of female nudes lying down (1975) and in a series of portraits and nudes of the eighties.

In the seventies he created a very interesting series of engravings, stimulated by Luis Solari, who was then living for long periods in the United States, and of whom he had been a friend since the fifties. In this process, the technical assistance of Glauco Capozzoli and the contacts with Raúl Pavlotzky, both of whom were experts in the language of engraving, were important. He also made an excellent series of gouaches in 1972. Engravings and gouaches are among the highlights of this period. From 1975 onwards he occasionally returned to relief and wood carving, continuing his creative activity until today.

He won the silver medal at the First American Biennial of Graphic Arts held in Cali (Colombia). He won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (1983), another from the New York Foundation for the Arts (1987), and in 1990 from the Adolph Gottlieb Foundation.

In 2005 he was declared an illustrious citizen of Montevideo and the Uruguayan Postal Service issued a postage stamp in homage to Alpuy, reproducing a fragment of his mural "Oficios" located at the Liceo Dámaso Antonio Larrañaga (Montevideo, Uruguay).

Solo exhibitions (selection):

1998- Arte BA, Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., New York (USA).
1997- Julio Alpuy's Travels, Sydney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, New York (USA).
1997- Works on Paper, Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., New York (USA).
1994 - Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., New York (USA).
1989 - Palatina Gallery, Buenos Aires (Argentina).
1988 - Diálogo Gallery, Brussels (Belgium).
1988 - Walter F. Maibaum Fine Arts, New York (USA).
1985 - Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, New York (USA).
1983 - Rayo Museum, Roldanillo-Valle (Colombia) "Organic Geometry".
1982 - Vermeer Gallery, Buenos Aires (Argentina).
1980- Sarmiento Gallery, Buenos Aires (Argentina).
1978 - La Trinchera Gallery, Caracas (Venezuela).
1972 - Center for Inter American Relations, New York (USA), Exhibition of Wooden Works.
1971 - Losada Gallery, Montevideo (Uruguay).
1969 - Zegri Gallery, New York (USA).
1965 - University of Massachusetts. Amherst (USA).
1964 - Walter Thompson Company, New York (USA).
1960 - Luis Angel Arango Library, Bogotá (Colombia).
1959 - Eugenio Mendoza Foundation, Caracas (Venezuela).

1958- Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, Bogotá (Colombia).
1956- Sociedad Amigos del Arte, Montevideo (Uruguay).
1948- Viangalería, Buenos Aires (Argentina).

Some Collective Exhibitions:

1996- Universal Constructivism & The School of the South, Art Museum of the Americas, Washington D.C. The Still Life, Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., Nueva York (USA).
1996- Le Cerde de Torres-García, Galería Zabriskie, Paris (France).
1996- El Espíritu de la Pintura Latinoamericana, Asoc. American, Artists Gal., Nueva York (USA).
1996- Latin Víewpoints, Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn, New York (USA).
1996- TTG, Praxis Gallery, New York (USA).
1995- 65 Años de Madera Constructivista, Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., New York (USA).
1994- Torres-García y la Escuela del Sur, Quinta Galería, Bogotá (Colombia).
1993-91 La Escuela del Sur, El Taller Torres García y su legado, Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (Spain).
1993-91 La galería de arte Archer M. Huntington, Austin, Texas (USA)
1993-91 Museo de Monterrey, Mexico
1993-91 El Museo del Bronx, New York (USA).
1993-91 Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico.
1991- Cirde y Square, Abstracción Geométrica y Constructivismo en las Américas, 1934-1950, Galería Kouros, New York (USA).
1986- Torres-García y su legado, Kouros Gallery, New York (USA).
1986- 4 Scheler Von Torres García, Galería E.R., Düsseldorf (Germany).
1985- Mira, Museo del Barrio, New York (USA).
1983- Cuatro Artistas Uruguayos, XVII Bienal de Sao Paulo (Brazil), Comisión Nacional de Bellas Artes.
1979- Ventana al Sur, Henry Street Settlement, New York (USA).
1978- Arte Iberoamericano, Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas (Venezuela).
1977- Dibujos latinoamericanos recientes, 1969-76, Fundación de Exposiciones Internacionales, Washington D.C. (USA).
1973- Nueva Pintura Latinoamericana, Museo de Arte del Condado de Queens, New York (USA).
1973- Trópico de Cáncer-Trópico de Capricornio Arte Latinoamericano Contemporáneo, Universidad de Massachusetts, Amherst, Ma (USA).
1972- Arte latinoamericano moderno, Universidad de Columbia, New York (USA).
1971- Obras seleccionadas de América Latina, Museo Stamford, Stamford, Connecticut (USA).
1970- Universalismo Constructivo, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires (Argentina).
1961- Taller Torres-García, The New School, New York (USA).
1956- Jonges Schilders uit Uruguay, Museo Stedelijk, Amsterdam (Holland).
1953- II Bienal, Museo de Arte Moderno, Sáo Paulo (Brazil).
1961-42 Taller Torres-García todas las muestras colectivas en Uruguay y en el extranjero, incluyendo en 1950, Exhibition at Unión Panamericana, Washington D.C. (USA).

His works are in public collections: National Visual Arts Museum (Montevideo, Uruguay), Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery (University of Texas at Austin, USA), The Bronx Museum (New York, USA), Museum of Tel Aviv (Israel), Museum of Trenton (Nueva Jersey, USA), The J. M. Kaplan Foundation Collection (USA), The Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection (USA), Banco de la República (Uruguay) and Biblioteca Àngel Arango (Bogotá, Colombia).

Died on April 5, 2009, at the age of 90.