Miquel Torner de Semir (1938) - Interior con figura

Signed by the artist on the bottom

The work is presented as is, unframed

Artwork measurements: 73 cm high x 60 cm wide

Good state of preservation

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BIOGRAPHY OF MIQUEL TORNER DE SEMIR.

Miquel Torner de Semir was born in 1938 in the castle of Santa Pau, in La Garrotxa (Girona), being the last living person born in this emblematic building surrounded by volcanoes (he currently lives in Sant Feliu de Guíxols). This fact marks his painter’s career. A man of old Catalonia, cultured, he has always been drawn to the Middle Ages, the Romanesque of the Pyrenees, and primitive Gothic. The influence of Italian Renaissance art, especially painters from the Italian Quattrocento such as Fra Angélico or Rafael, is noticeable in many of Torner de Semir’s female portraits, including the one we have here. It is precisely that blend of old and new where the originality of his work lies. What seems to have formed him most is his knowledge of Romanesque and Gothic. His figures, often outlined with a thick dark line, evoke Gothic stained glass—luminous, beautiful in themselves and for themselves. A disciple of the mural painter and engraver Ricard Marlet, he learns what he considers the most important: the discipline of drawing. Through Maestro Marlet he comes to know Modernism and Catalan Noucentisme. He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Sant Jordi in Barcelona and at the San Fernando School in Madrid, where he visits the Prado Museum and immerses himself in Velázquez’s painting, choosing to reproduce the meninas to his liking, with his own style, using vivid color tones such as pink and fluorescent violet that leave no doubt about the artist’s emphasis, modernity, and charm. Moreover, if you look closely, you can notice the artist’s use of collage techniques, embedding a piece of fabric, cardboard, or even a musical score.

In Paris, he begins his work as he calls it “between the old and the new.” He began holding solo exhibitions in Terrassa in 1968, later in other Catalan cities and in Paris (galeries Espace and Boutique). His work started with a Mediterranean figurativism, eventually opening into abstraction, then returning to a figurative modern concept. He is considered, ultimately, one of the most important exponents of Mediterranean painting.

All these tendencies were not unknown to him, since in Barcelona he had the opportunity to meet the group Dau al Set. In the Dau al Set school he encounters renowned artists such as Tharrats, Muxart, or Tapies. His painting is characterized by the use of bright, rich colors. His work can be defined in one word: LIFE. Thus, the magnificent work of this Catalan painter is characterized by its rich, textured color palette of great vivacity, which together with the various materials he uses as support gives us the result of an expressive, high-quality chromatic, and distinctly personal painting, defining the artist as a master.

The classical and the new fuse in Miquel Torner de Semir’s brush. Time dissolves, fades away. The dividing line between past and present is erased with his paintings, with his way of tracing on the canvas. Miquel achieves what very few before him have achieved: speaking of the past with a voice of the present. His voice: his paintings. His method: passion. His achievement: his entire body of work.

The painter from Girona is influenced by the ancients—Giotto, the Italian Renaissance, and the informal pursuit of abstract painters. All of this is the starting point of his painting; he cares about craft as much as concept, trying to be a bridge painter between the past and the present, but also open to everything new, to constant search. An interesting contrast in Torner de Semir’s work is how he presents people, places, and situations from ancient times, depicted with modern painting techniques. This eminent Catalan painter has managed to break with the rules of time. So direct is Miquel Torner de Semir in defining lines and shapes that, at first glance, it seems incredible that the work is a two-dimensional canvas, appearing to the naked eye as a sum of textures from a three-dimensional world.

Some of his works have a notable bourgeois accent, with an intense and expressive color palette, in contrast with the serenity and vacant look of the faces that invites the viewer to delve into the setting of the work and the artist’s thoughts. Nevertheless, Torner de Semir has a distinct personal style based on the simplicity of execution within a well-structured composition. The female figures have the slow forms of religious art and express the calm of the spirit. The figure serves Semir to reclaim order and the rhythm of human actions.

According to Joan Lluís Montañé, a Barcelonan and member of the International Association of Art Critics, the prestigious Catalan painter Torner de Semir, in his extensive body of work, “is interested in composition and color, generators of especially elaborate creations, where the imprint of determination and a contrasted color palette is evident. He exhibits figures, landscapes, and compositions that represent a clear exercise in pictorial academicism in which he does not renounce a certain formal and technical innovation, all within an unmistakable personal plastic sello (brand).

Art critic Josep M. Cadena says of Semir: “The painter marks with strong and precise lines the silhouettes of the main elements of each composition and uses basic, pure colors to express feelings. When possible, he paints the picture within the picture, and even tries to place abstract interpretations and signs in his backgrounds. Thus he achieves a positive relationship between the various forms of artistic expression that motivate him, and his plastic language is much richer and more attractive. He has his own style based on the simplicity of execution within a well-structured composition. His female figures have the slow forms of religious art and express the calm that must govern the realizations of the spirit. The figure serves to demand order and rhythm in human actions; his painting is ethical. He communicates positive sensations easily to those who know his work.”

For J. Llop S.: “Drawing, the fundamental, strong, precise, incisive stroke, establishes the form, delineates spaces in the meditated compositions that Torner de Semir presents. And then comes the seeing in a different way, the imaginative, the dreams that connect with the reality he describes and clothes with a chromaticism that blends basic colors and soft tones. It is a personal style that discovers the other reality of the landscape and of the figure. An interesting and captivating work that draws the viewer in and leads him along the path of the imaginative.”

Consistent with his view of primitivism, he has not worried much about his social projection towards his teachers; these were sometimes unnamed, and although his works are in many countries, he has exhibited in Europe, America, and Japan, a comprehensive compiling of his CV is difficult. He currently has a permanent exhibition at La Galería Arcadia in Madrid.

In 2003 he was chosen by the Museo de la Real Casa de la Moneda to have one of his works issued on a postage stamp and to participate in the XXV anniversary of the Spanish Constitution. In the meantime, the Museo de la Real Casa de la Moneda in Madrid has organized an exhibition of his works.

Torner’s works have been shown in a large number of European and Spanish cities such as: Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Strasbourg, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Dijon, Clermont-Ferrand, Barcelona, Girona, Valencia, Seville, Pontevedra, Oviedo, etc. Now, below, a selection of some of the artist’s most important exhibitions:

Most significant exhibitions
Amics de les Arts. Terrassa - Barcelona.
Pinacoteca. Sabadell - Barcelona.
Société des Artistes Independants. Paris.
Grand Palais. Paris.
Dan Art, Béziers-France.
Galerie Espace. Paris - Beaubourg.
Lions Club. Chartres Doyen - France.
Honorary guest at the exhibition of the Cercle Espanyol. Dreux - France.
Salon d’Automne. Clermont-Ferrand - France.
Grand Prix la Femme et l’Imabonnaire Jeanne Gatineau. Paris.
Sala Gavina. Palamós - Girona.
Sala Clará, Olot-Barcelona.
Espai cultural Francolí-Barcelona.
Galerie Boutique. Paris, France.
La Galerie de l’Hotel Meridien. Paris.
L’Atelier. Platja d’Aro, Girona.
Ausstellungsraume der Mineralquelle Eptigen. Switzerland.
Galería Arcadia- Madrid.
Galería de arte Star. Colectiva. Madrid.
Galería 4 Cantons. Olot, Girona.
Galería Catalonia-Barcelona.
Galería Art 16. Olot, Girona.
Pedreguet Art espai contemporani. Girona.
Galería Da Vinci Art. Girona.
Galerie Ducs de Dijon. France.
Galería Campo u Campo. Belgium.
Galería B.C.S. Strasbourg. France.
Haus Arnold. Frankfurt am Main. Germany.
Haus Berlinghoff. Heidelberg. Germany.
Naumilenium. Barcelona.
Lart century art. Barcelona.
Real Club Náutico de Sanxenxo. Pontevedra.
Picassomio.com Madrid.
Galeries d’Art Christian Dazy. Dijon-Megeve-France.
Conmemorative Exhibition of the 25th Anniversary of the Spanish Constitution. Madrid.
Sala Constanti Art, Reus. Christmas Collective, 2009-Tarragona.