Miquel Torner de Semir (1938) - La mujer frutera

Signed by the artist at the bottom

The work is well presented framed

Dimensions of the artwork: 65 cm high x 54 cm wide

Frame dimensions: 90 cm high x 79 cm wide

Good preservation 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 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 Angélico or Raphael, is evident in many of Torner de Semir’s portraits of women, including the one we have here. It is precisely that blend of the old and the new where the originality of his work lies. What seems to have shaped him most is his knowledge of Romanesque and Gothic art. His figures, often outlined with a thick dark line, evoke Gothic luminous stained glass, beautiful in themselves and for themselves. A pupil of mural painter and engraver Ricard Marlet, he learns what he considers the most important: the discipline of drawing. With Master Marlet he encounters 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 absorb Velázquez’s painting, choosing to reproduce the Las Meninas to his taste, with his own style, using bright colors like pink and phosphorescent violet that leave no doubt about the artist’s emphasis, modernity, and charm. Moreover, if you look closely, you can notice the use of collage technique by the artist, in which he embeds a piece 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 (galleries Espace and Boutique). His work started in a Mediterranean figurativism, which eventually led to abstraction, and then returned 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 opportunity to encounter the Dau al Set group. In the Dau al Set school he met renowned artists such as Tharrats, Muxart, or Tapies. His painting is characterized by the use of bright, rich colors. His work can be defined in one word: LIFE. Thus, the magnificent work of this Catalan painter is characterized by its rich, well-layered color with great vivacity, which, together with the various materials he uses as support, yields 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 within 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: all his work.

The painter from Girona is influenced by the ancients—Giotto, the Italian Renaissance—and by the informal exploration of abstract painters. All this is the starting point of his painting; he is as concerned with craft as with concept, attempting to be a bridge painter between the past and the present, but also open to everything new, to constant exploration. An interesting contrast in Torner de Semir’s work is how he presents people, places, and situations from ancient eras, rendered with modern painting techniques. This esteemed Catalan painter has managed to break the rules of time. So direct is Miquel Torner de Semir in defining lines and forms that, at first glance, it seems the work is a two-dimensional canvas, as if the painting were 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, contrasted with the serenity and blank gaze of the faces that invite 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 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, from Barcelona, member of the International Association of Art Critics, the prestigious Catalan painter Torner de Semir in his extensive body of work, "is interested in composition and color, a generator of especially elaborate 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 the silhouettes of the main elements of each composition with strong, precise lines and uses basic, pure colors to express feelings. When possible, he creates the painting within the painting, and even tries to place in his backgrounds interpretations and abstract signs. In this way he achieves a positive relationship between the various forms of artistic expression that motivate him, and his plastic language becomes much richer and more attractive. He has a distinctive 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 should govern spiritual realizations. 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 line, 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, dreams that intertwine with the reality it describes and dresses with a chromaticism that combines basic colors with soft tones. It is a personal style that discovers the other reality of the landscape, of the figure. Interesting and attractive work, that grips the viewer and guides him along the path of the imaginative."

Consistent with his vision of the primitives, he has not worried much about their social projection toward his teachers; these were sometimes unnamed, and although his works are in many countries, he has exhibited in Europe, America, and Japan, it is difficult to compile an exhaustive CV. 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 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, here are some of the artist’s most important exhibitions:

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.

Lions 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’Imagerie Jeanne Gatineau. Paris.

Sala Gavina. Palamós - Girona.

Sala Clará, Olot-Barcelona.

Espai cultural Francolí-Barcelona.

Galerie Boutique. Paris, France.

La Galerie de l’Hotel Méridien. 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.Francia.

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 exhibition, 2009-Tarragona.