Miquel Torner de Semir (1938) - Menina

Signed by the artist on the bottom

The work is presented framed

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

Dimensions of the frame: 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 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 painterly vocation. A man of old Catalonia, cultured, he has always felt attracted to the Middle Ages, Iberian Románico in the Pyrenees 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, such as the one we present. It is precisely that blend between the ancient 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 outlined with a thick dark line, evoke Gothic stained glass: luminous, beautiful in themselves and for themselves. A pupil of the mural painter and engraver Ricard Marlet, he learns what he considers most important, the discipline of drawing. With Maestro Marlet he becomes acquainted with 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 visited the Prado Museum and absorbed Velázquez’s painting, choosing to reproduce the meninas to his taste, with his own style, using vivid colors like pink and fluorescent violet that leave no doubt about the artist’s emphasis, modernity and charm. Moreover, if one looks closely, one can find the artist’s use of collage techniques, which he embeds as 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 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 figurativism, evolving later into abstraction, and returning to a figurative style with a 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 renown 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 thick color, vibrant, which, together with the various materials he uses as a support, gives us the result of an expressionist 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 have achieved before: to speak 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 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 about concept, trying 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, depicted 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 it is sometimes incredible that the work is a two-dimensional canvas, at first glance seeming a three-dimensional world of textures.

Some of his works have a notable faubiste 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 environment of the work and the artist’s thinking. Nevertheless, Torner de Semir has his own style based on the simplicity of realization 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 reclaim 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, generators of especially elaborate creations, where the imprint of determination and the contrasted color palette is noticeable. He exhibits figures, landscapes and compositions that imply a clear exercise in pictorial academicism in which he does not renounce a certain formal and technical innovation, all within an unmistakable personal plastic signature.”

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 and pure colors to express feelings. When possible he makes the painting inside the painting, 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 realization 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 easily conveys 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 clothes with a chromatic that combines basic colors, 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 concerned himself too much with 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, making it difficult to compile an exhaustive curriculum. 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 to participate in the exhibition for 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 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 see, below, some of the most significant exhibitions of the Catalan artist:

Most significant exhibitions
Amics de les Arts. Terrassa - Barcelona.

Pinacoteca. Sabadell - Barcelona.

Societé des Artistes Indépendants. Paris.

Grand Palais. Paris.

Dan Art, Béziers-France.

Galerie Espace. Paris -Beaubourg.

Lyons Club. Chartres Doyen - France.

Honored guest at the exhibition of the Cercle Español. Dreux - France.

Salon d’Automne. Clermont-Ferrand - France.

Grand Prix la Femme et l’Imaginary 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. Estrasburgo.France.

Haus Arnold. Frankfurt am Main.Germany.

Haus Berlinghoff. Heidelberg.Germany.

Naumilenium. Barcelona.

Art century art. Barcelona.

Real Club Náutico de Sanxenxo. Pontevedra.

Picassomio.com Madrid.

Galeries d’Art Christian Dazy. Dijon-Megeve-France.

Exhibition Commemorating the 25th Anniversary of the Spanish Constitution. Madrid.

Sala Constanti Art, Reus. Christmas Collective, 2009-Tarragona.