Miquel Torner de Semir (1938) - Composición figurativa

Signed by the artist on the bottom part

The work is presented very well framed with a polychromed wooden frame

Artwork dimensions: 73 cm high x 60 cm wide

Frame dimensions: 90 cm high x 77 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 (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 felt drawn to the Middle Ages, the Romanesque of the Pyrenees, and primitive Gothic art. The influence 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 have here. It is precisely this blend between the old and the new where the originality of his work lies. What seems to have shaped him most is the knowledge of the Romanesque and Gothic. His figures, often outlined by a thick dark line, evoke Gothic stained glass windows, luminous, beautiful in themselves and by themselves. A disciple of muralist painter and engraver Ricard Marlet, he learns what is most important to him: the discipline of drawing. With Maestro Marlet he becomes acquainted with Modernism and 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 liking, with his own style, using vibrant colors like pink and fluorescent violet that leave no doubt about the artist’s highlight, modernity, and charm. Also, if one looks closely, one can find the artist’s use of collage technique, embedding 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 to hold solo exhibitions in Terrassa in 1968, subsequently doing so in other Catalan cities and in Paris (Espace gallery and Boutique). His work began in a Mediterranean figurativism, evolving then into abstraction, to return to a figuration of modern concept. He is considered, ultimately, 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 group Dau al Set. In the Dau al Set school he encounters renowned artists such as Tharrats, Muxart, or Tapies. 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, blended color with great vivacity, which, together with the various materials he uses as support, gives us the result of an expressionist 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 tracing 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 his work.

The painter from Girona 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; craft is as important or more than concept to him, 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, 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 forms that it is sometimes amazing that the work is a two-dimensional canvas, seeming at first glance that the painting is more like 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 empty gaze of the faces that invites the viewer to delve into the setting of the work and the artist’s thoughts. Nevertheless, Torner de Semir has a true style based on the simplicity of execution within a well-structured composition. The female figures have the measured 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, 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, a generator of creations especially elaborated, 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 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 picture within the picture, and even tries to put in his backgrounds interpretations and abstract signs. 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 a personal 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 peace that their realizations of the spirit must obey. The figure serves to demand order and rhythm in human actions; his painting is ethical. It conveys positive sensations easily to those who know his work.”

For J. Llop S.: “The drawing, the fundamental, strong, precise, incisive line establishes the form, delimiting 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 dresses with a chromaticism that combines basic colors and soft tones. It is a personal style that discovers another reality of the landscape, of the figure. Interesting and attractive work, that traps the spectator and leads him along the path of the imaginative.”

Consistent with his view of the primitive, he has not concerned himself 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 an exhaustive compilation of his résumé difficult. 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 participate in the XXV anniversary exhibition 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 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 Artiste 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 Cercle Espanyol. Dreux - France.
Salon d’Autome. Clermont-Ferrand - France.
Grand Prix la Famme et l’Imabonnaire 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.
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.
Lart century art. Barcelona.
Real Club Náutico de Sanxenxo. Pontevedra.
Picassomio.com Madrid.
Galeries d’Art Christian Dazy. Dijon-Megeve-France.
Exposición Conmemorativa del 25 Aniversario de la Constitución Española. Madrid.
Sala Constanti Art, Reus. Christmas Collective, 2009-Tarragona.
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