Miquel Torner de Semir (1938) - Composición figurativa

Signed by the artist on the bottom part

The work is presented well framed with a polychromed wooden frame

Dimensions of the artwork: 73 cm high x 60 cm wide

Frame dimensions: 90 cm high x 77 cm wide

Good condition

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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 (Gerona), being the last living person born in this emblematic building surrounded by volcanoes (he currently lives in San Feliu de Guíxols). This fact marks his painter’s path. A man of old Catalonia, cultured, he has always been drawn to the Middle Ages, Romanesque from 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 portraits of women, 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 shaped him most is the knowledge of Romanesque and Gothic. His figures, often outlined by a thick dark line, evoke Gothic stained glass—luminous, beautiful in themselves and for themselves. A pupil of mural painter and engraver Ricard Marlet, he learns what he considers most important: drawing discipline. Under Maestro Marlet he discovers 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 would visit the Prado Museum and soak up Velázquez’s painting, choosing to reproduce the meninas to his liking, with his own style, using bright colors 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 that the artist uses collage techniques, embedding a piece of fabric, cardboard, or even a sheet of music.

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 doing so in other Catalan cities and in Paris (Espace and Boutique galleries). His work started in a Mediterranean figurativism, evolving into abstraction, and then returning to a modern figurative 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 chance to meet the group Dau al Set. In the Dau al Set school he meets renowned artists such as Tharrats, Muxart, or Tapies. His painting is characterized by the use of vivid, 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, thickly applied color, of great vivacity, which, combined with the various materials he uses as supports, yields a result of high-quality chromatic expressionist painting with a strong personality, defining the artist as a master.

The classic 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 have before: speaking of the past with a present voice. His voice: his paintings. His method: passion. His achievement: all his work.

The painter from Girona is influenced by the old masters, Giotto, the Italian Renaissance, and the informal search of abstract painters. All this is the starting point of his painting; he cares as much or more about craft as he does about concept, trying to be a bridge painter between past and present, but also open to all that is new, in constant search. An interesting contrast in Torner de Semir’s work is the way he presents people, places and situations from ancient times, depicted with modern painting techniques. This renowned 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, the work may seem to be a two-dimensional canvas, as if the painting were more a sum of textures from a three-dimensional world.

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

According to Joan Lluís Montañé, a 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 especially elaborate creations, where the mark of determination and the contrasting palette is evident. He exhibits figures, landscapes and compositions that imply a clear exercise of pictorial academicism in which he 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. When possible, he creates the painting within the painting, and even attempts to place abstract interpretations and signs in his backgrounds. In this way 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 guide 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.: “The drawing, the fundamental stroke, strong, precise, incisive, establishes the form, delimites spaces in the meditated compositions that Torner de Semir presents to us. And then comes seeing differently, the imaginative, comes the dreams that connect with the reality that he describes and dresses with a chromaticism that combines basic colors and 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.”

Consonant with his view of the primitives, he has not worried too much about his social projection toward his teachers; they were sometimes unnamed, and although his works are in many countries, he has exhibited in Europe, America and Japan, it is difficult to compile his curriculum exhaustively. He currently exhibits, permanently, 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 participate in the XXV anniversary of the Spanish Constitution exhibit. 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, Gerona, Valencia, Seville, Pontevedra, Oviedo, etc. Let us now look at some of the artist’s most important exhibitions:

Most significant exhibitions
Amics de les Arts. Terrassa - Barcelona.
Pinacoteca. Sabadell - Barcelona.
Societe des Artistes Independants. Paris.
Grand Palais. Paris.
Dan Art, Béziers-France.
Galerie Espace. Paris - Beaubourg.
Lyons 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’Imamoneire 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. Melbourne. (Note: This one in original says Madrid; adapted as 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 Naútico 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 Group Show, 2009-Tarragona.
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