Miquel Torner de Semir (1938) - Ecos del mar

Signed by the artist on the bottom

The work is presented framed

Artwork dimensions: 33 cm high x 41 cm wide

Frame dimensions: 56 cm high x 64 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 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 facet 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 Angélico or Raphael, is evident in many of Torner de Semir’s female portraits, including the one we are considering. It is precisely that blend of the old and the 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—bright, beautiful in themselves and by themselves. A disciple of the mural artist and engraver Ricard Marlet, he learns what he considers most important, the discipline of drawing. With Maestro 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 meninas to his liking, with his own style, using vivid colors such as pink and phosphorescent violet that leave no doubt about the emphasis, modernity, and charm of the artist. Moreover, if one looks closely, one can find the use of collage technique by the artist, who inserts a piece of fabric, cardboard, or even sheet 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 began in a Mediterranean figurativism, evolving into abstraction, then returning to a figurative modern concept. He is regarded, ultimately, as one of the most important exponents of Mediterranean painting.

All these trends were not unknown to him, since in Barcelona he had the chance to meet the Dau al Set group. At the Dau al Set school he encounters renown 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, cohesive color, high vitality, which, combined 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 merge 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 the canvas. Miquel achieves what very few before him have managed: to speak of the past with the voice of the present. His voice: his paintings. His method: passion. His achievement: all of his work.

The painter from Girona is influenced by the ancients, Giotto, the Italian Renaissance, and by the informal search of abstract painters. All of this is the starting point of his painting; craft concerns him as much or more than concept. He has tried to be a bridge painter between past and present, but also open to everything new, to constant searching. An interesting contrast in Torner de Semir’s work is how he presents people, places, and situations from ancient eras, depicted with modern painting techniques. This illustrious Catalan painter has been able 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 appearing to be a sum of textures from a three-dimensional world.

Some of his works have a notable faubiste accent, with an intense and expressive color palette, contrasted with the serenity and vacant gaze of the faces inviting the viewer to delve into the artist’s environment and thought. 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 paused forms of religious art and express the calm of the spirit. The figure serves Semir to claim order and rhythm in human actions.

According to Joan Lluís Montañé, a Barcelona-born 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 elaborated creations where the imprint of determination and a contrasted color palette is evident. He exhibits figures, landscapes, and compositions that constitute 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 paints the picture within the picture, and even attempts to place abstract interpretations and signs in his backgrounds. 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 personal style based on the simplicity of execution within a very well-structured composition. The female figures have the paused forms of religious art and express the calm that should govern the realizations of the spirit. The figure serves to demand order and rhythm in human actions; his painting is ethical. It communicates positive feelings easily to those who know his work.”

For J. Llop S.: “Drawing, the fundamental, strong, precise, incisive stroke, establishes the form, defines spaces in the meditated compositions that Torner de Semir presents to us. And then the seeing in a different way arrives, the imaginative, the dreams that connect with the reality that he describes and clothes with a chromaticism that blends 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 imagination.”

Consistent with his vision of the primitives, he has not worried much about their social projection toward his masters; 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 an exhaustive curriculum vitae. 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 of the Spanish Constitution. In the meantime, the Museo de la Real Casa de la Moneda in Madrid 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 artist’s most important solo and collective exhibitions in Catalan painting:

Most significant exhibitions
Amics de les Arts. Terrassa - Barcelona.
Pinacoteca. Sabadell - Barcelona.
Société des Artistes Independants. Paris.
Grand Palais. Paris.
Dan Art, Béziers-France.
Galerie Espace. Paris - Beaubourg.
Lions 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’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 Meridien. Paris.
L’Atelier. Platja d’Aro.Girona.
Ausstellungsraume der Mineralquelle Eptigen. Switzerland.
Galería Arcadia- Madrid.
Galería de arte Star. Collective. 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.
Naumilenium. Barcelona.
Lart century art. Barcelona.
Real Club Náutico de Sanxenxo. Pontevedra.
Picassomio.com Madrid.
Galeries d’Art Christian Dazy. Dijon-Meggerve-France.
Exhibition Commemorating the 25th Anniversary of the Spanish Constitution. Madrid.
Sala Constanti Art, Reus. Christmas Collective, 2009-Tarragona.