Miquel Torner de Semir (1938) - Dama con abanico

Signed by the artist on the bottom

The work is presented framed with a polychrome wooden frame (the frame shows some loss of polychromy)

Artwork dimensions: 65 cm high x 54 cm wide

Frame dimensions: 81 cm high x 70 cm wide

Good condition

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BIOGRAPHY OF MIQUEL TORNER DE SEMIR:

Miquel Torner de Semir was born in 1938 in the last century, at the Castle of Santa Pau, in La Garrotxa (Girona), being the last living person born in this emblematic building surrounded by volcanoes (currently he lives in San Feliu de Guíxols). This fact marks his painterly facet. A man of old Catalonia, cultured, he has always felt attracted to the Middle Ages, the Romanesque of the Pyrenees, and primitive Gothic. The influence of Italian Renaissance art, especially painters of the Italian Quattrocento such as Fra Angelico or Raphael, can be felt in many of Torner de Semir’s female portraits, including the one we are considering. It is precisely this blend between the old and the new where the originality of his work lies. What seems to have formed him most is the knowledge of Romanesque and Gothic art. His figures, often outlined with a thick dark line, evoke Gothic stained glass—luminous, beautiful in themselves and by themselves. A pupil of mural painter and printmaker Ricard Marlet, he learns what he considers most important, the discipline of drawing. Under Maestro Marlet he discovers Modernism and the Catalan Nuevol- centism. He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Sant Jordi in Barcelona and at the San Fernando School in Madrid, where he would visit the Prado Museum and absorb Velázquez’s painting, choosing to reproduce the meninas to his liking, with his own style, employing vivid colors such as pink and fluorescent violet that leave no doubt about the artist’s emphasis, modernity, and charm. Moreover, if one observes closely, one can notice the artist’s use of collage, embedding pieces 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 started holding solo exhibitions in Terrassa in 1968, later doing so in other Catalan cities and in Paris (Espace and Boutique galleries). His work began in a Mediterranean figuration, evolving then into abstraction, before returning to a modern concept of figuration. 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 chance to meet the group Dau al Set. In the Dau al Set school he meets renowned artists such as Tharrats, Muxart, or Tapiés. His painting is characterized by the use of vivid and rich colors. His work can be defined in a single word: LIFE. Thus, the magnificent work of this Catalan painter is characterized by its rich and harmonious color palette with the various materials he uses as support, yielding a result of expressive painting of high chromatic quality and pronounced personality, 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 managed: to speak of the past with a voice of the present. His voice: his pictures. His method: passion. His achievement: all his work.

The painter from Girona is influenced by the ancients, Giotto, the Italian Renaissance and the informal search of abstract painters. All of this is the starting point of his painting; craft concerns him as much as concept, he has tried to be a bridge painter between past and 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, rendered with modern painting techniques. This distinguished Catalan painter has been able to break with time’s rules. So direct is Miquel Torner de Semir in defining lines and shapes that it is sometimes incredible that the work is a two-dimensional canvas, at first glance appearing to be a sum of textures of a three-dimensional world.

Some of his works have a notable Fauvist accent, with an intense and expressive color palette, in contrast with the serenity and empty gaze of the faces that invite the viewer to immerse in the work’s environment and the artist’s thinking. Nevertheless, Torner de Semir has a style of his own based on the simplicity of execution within a very well-structured composition. The feminine figures have the calm forms of religious art and express the calm of the spirit. The figure serves Semir to claim order and the rhythm of human actions.

According to Joan Lluís Montañé, Barcelonese, member of the International Association of Art Critics, the prestigious Catalan painter Torner de Semir, in his extensive pictorial work, “is interested in composition and color, a generator of specially elaborated creations where the imprint of determination and the contrasted color palette is evident. It shows figures, landscapes, and compositions that represent a clear exercise in pictorial academicism in which it does not renounce a certain formal and technical innovation, all within an unmistakable personal plastic seal.”

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. Whenever possible, he makes the painting inside the painting, and even tries to place interpretations and abstract 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 a personal style based on the simplicity of execution within a very well-structured composition. His female figures have the calm 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 line, strong, precise, incisive, establishes the form, defines spaces in the meditated compositions that Torner de Semir presents to us. And then comes seeing differently, the imaginative arrives, the dreams that connect with the reality that he describes and dresses with a chromaticism that blends basic colors with soft tones. It is a personal style that discovers the other reality of the landscape, of the figure. An interesting and attractive work that captivates the viewer and leads him along the path of the imaginative.”

Consistent with his view of the primitives, he has not worried too much about his social projection toward his masters, these were sometimes unnamed, and although his works are in many countries, he has exhibited in Europe, America, and Japan; compiling his curriculum vitae exhaustively is difficult. He currently exhibits permanently at La Galería Arcadia in Madrid.

In 2003 he was chosen by the Real Casa de la Moneda Museum to have one of his works issued on a postage stamp and to participate in the XXV anniversary of the Spanish Constitution exhibition. Meanwhile, 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, some of the most important exhibitions of the Catalan artist:

Most significant exhibitions
Amics de les Arts. Terrassa - Barcelona.
Pinacoteca. Sabadell - Barcelona.
Société des Artistes Indépendants. Paris.
Grand Palais. Paris.
Dan Art, Béziers-France.
Galerie Espace. Paris - Beaubourg.
Lions Club. Chartres Doyen - France.
Honorable guest at the Cercle Espanyol exhibition. Dreux - France.
Salon d’Automne. Clermont Ferrand - France.
Grand Prix la Femme et l’Imabonaire 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.
Ausstellungsräume 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. Estrasburgo.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-Megève-France.
Exhibition commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Spanish Constitution. Madrid.
Sala Constanti Art, Reus. Christmas Collective, 2009-Tarragona.
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