Miquel Torner de Semir (1938) - Mujer con flor

Signed by the artist at the bottom

The work is presented framed

Artwork dimensions: 65 cm high x 50 cm wide

Frame dimensions: 82 cm high x 68 cm wide

In 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 Garrotxa (Girona), being the last living person born in this emblematic structure surrounded by volcanoes (today he lives in San Feliu de Guíxols). This fact marks his path as a painter. 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 of the Italian Quattrocento such as Fra Angelico or Raphael, is felt 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 the 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 pupil of mural painter and engraver Ricard Marlet, he learns what he considers the most important thing: the discipline of drawing. Under Maestro Marlet he discovers Modernism 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 meninas to his liking, in his own style, with vivid color tones such as pink and fluorescent violet that leave no doubt about his emphasis, modernity, and friendliness as an artist. Moreover, if you look closely, you can notice the artist’s use of collage technique, embedding a piece of fabric, cardboard, or even a music 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 doing so in other Catalan cities and in Paris (Espace and Boutique galleries). His work started in a Mediterranean figurativism, evolving into abstraction, and 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, as in Barcelona he had the opportunity to meet the group Dau al Set. In the school of Dau al Set he encounters renowned artists such as Tharrats, Muxart, or Tàpies. 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 and cohesive color palette of great vivacity, which, together with the various materials he uses as support, gives us the result of an expressive painting of high chromatic quality and marked 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 drawing on canvas. Miquel achieves what very few before him have achieved: speaking of the past with the voice of the present. His voice: his paintings. His method: passion. His achievement: all his work.

The painter from Gerona 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; he cares as much or more for workmanship as for concept. He has tried to be a bridge painter between past and present, but also open to all that is new, to constant search. An interesting contrast in Torner de Semir’s work is the way he presents people, places, and situations from ancient times, rendered with modern painting techniques. This illustrious 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, as if the painting were more a sum of textures from a three-dimensional world.

Some of his works have a notable faubist 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 work’s environment and the artist’s thoughts. Nevertheless, Torner de Semir has a style of his own based on the simplicity of execution within a well-structured composition. The female figures have the slow shapes 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 elaborately crafted creations, where the imprint of determination and a contrasted color palette is noticeable. 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 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 makes the painting within the painting, and even tries to place in his backgrounds interpretations and abstract signs. Thus he achieves a positive relationship between the diverse forms of artistic expression that motivate him, and his plastic language is much richer and more attractive. He has a unique style based on the simplicity of execution within a very well-structured composition. The female figures have the slow forms of religious art and express the calm that must guide the realizations of the spirit. The figure helps him to demand order and rhythm in human actions; his painting is ethical. He communicates easily positive sensations to those who know his work.”

For J. Llop S.: “The drawing, the fundamental stroke, strong, precise, incisive, 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 he describes and dresses with a chromatism that combines 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 vision of the primitives, he has not worried much about social projection toward his teachers; they were sometimes unnamed, and although his works are in many countries, he has shown in Europe, America, and Japan, making a comprehensive compilation of his curriculum difficult. He currently displays, on a permanent basis, 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 of the Spanish Constitution exhibition. 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 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. Let us now outline some of the artist’s most important exhibitions:

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.
Honored guest at the exhibition of 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’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.