Miquel Torner de Semir (1938) - Menina

Signed by the artist on the bottom part

The work is presented framed

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

Frame dimensions: 84 cm high x 71 cm wide

Good conservation state

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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 Garrotxa (Gerona), 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 drawn to the Middle Ages, Pyrenean Romanesque, and primitive Gothic. The trace 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 have here. It is precisely that mix between the old and the 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 edged with a thick dark line, evoke Gothic stained glass—luminous, beautiful in themselves and for themselves. A pupil of muralist and engraver Ricard Marlet, he learns what he considers most important, the discipline of drawing. Under maestro Marlet, he becomes acquainted with Modernisme and the 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 las meninas to his liking, with his own style, using bright colors such as pink and phosphorescent violet that leave no doubt about the artist’s prominence, modernity, and charm. Also, if one looks closely, one can notice the use of collage techniques, into which he embeds scraps 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 to hold 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 figurativism, evolving into abstraction, then returning to a figuration of modern concept. He is regarded, ultimately, as 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 Dau al Set group. 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, rich colors. His work can be defined in one word: LIFE. Thus, the magnificent work of this Catalan painter is characterized by his rich, impasto color palette of great vivacity, which, together with the various materials he uses as a support, yields a result of high-quality chromatic expressionist painting and a strongly personal 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 before him have achieved: to speak of the past with the 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 this is the starting point of his painting; he cares as much or more for craft as for concept, trying to be a bridge between past and present, but also open to all that is new, to constant exploration. 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 illustrious Catalan painter has been able to break with the rules of time. As direct as Miquel Torner de Semir is in defining lines and shapes, it is sometimes incredible that the work is a two-dimensional canvas, at first glance appearing as 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, in contrast to the serenity and vacant gaze of the faces that invite the viewer to delve into the setting of the work and the artist’s thought. Nevertheless, Torner de Semir has a style of his own based on the simplicity of execution within a very 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 order and the rhythm of human actions.

According to Joan Lluís Montañé, a Barcelonan, 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, generators of specially elaborated creations, where the imprint of determination and the contrasted color palette is evident. It shows figures, landscapes, and compositions that assume a clear exercise of pictorial academicism in which he does not renounce certain formal and technical innovation, all within an unmistakable personal plastic seal.”

The 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 makes the painting inside the painting, and even attempts to place abstract interpretations and signs in his backgrounds. This 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. It communicates positive sensations easily to those who know his work.”

For J. Llop S.: “Drawing, the fundamental, strong, precise, incisive trace, establishes the form, delineates spaces in the meditated compositions that Torner de Semir presents to us. And then comes the seeing in a different way, the imaginative, the dreams that connect with the reality that he describes and clothes with a chromaticism that fuses basic colors, soft tones. It is a personal style that reveals the other reality of the landscape, of the figure. Interesting and attractive work, that grips the viewer and leads him on the path of the imaginative.”

Consistent with his vision of the primitives, he has not worried too much about his social projection toward his mentors; these were sometimes unnamed and although his works are in many countries, he has exhibited in Europe, America, and Japan, making a comprehensive compilation of his CV difficult. He currently exhibits permanently at La Galería Arcadia in Madrid.

In 2003 he is 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 exhibition of the Spanish Constitution. Meanwhile, the Museo de la Real Casa de la Moneda in Madrid has organized an exhibition of his works.

Torner’s works have been exhibited 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.
Sociéte des Artistes Independants. Paris.
Grand Palais. Paris.
Dan Art, Béziers-France.
Galerie Espace. Paris - Beaubourg.
Lyons Club. Chartres Doyen - France.
Guest of honor at the exhibition of the Cercle Espanyol. Dreux - France.
Salon d’Automne. Clermont Ferrand - France.
Grand Prix la Femme et l’Imaginaire Jeanne Gatineau. Paris.
Sala Gavina. Palamós - Girona.
Sala Clará, Olot-Barcelona.
Espai cultural Francolí-Barcelona.
Galerie Boutique. Paris, France.
La Galerie de l’hôtel 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. Strasbourg. France.
Haus Arnold. Frankfurt am Main. Germany.
Haus Berlinghoff. Heidelberg. Germany.
Naumillenium. Barcelona.
Lart century art. Barcelona.
Real Club Náutico de Sanxenxo. Pontevedra.
Picassomio.com Madrid.
Galeries d’Art Christian Dazy. Dijon-Megève-France.
Commemorative Exhibition of the 25th Anniversary of the Spanish Constitution. Madrid.
Sala Constanti Art, Reus. Collective Christmas, 2009- Tarragona.