Miquel Torner de Semir (1938) - Composición figurativa

Signed by the artist on the bottom

The artwork is presented very nicely framed with a polychrome wooden frame

Artwork measurements: 73 cm high x 60 cm wide

Frame measurements: 90 cm high x 77 cm wide

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), as the last living person born in this emblematic building surrounded by volcanoes (currently he lives in Sant Feliu de Guíxols). This fact marks his painterly facet. 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 Angelico or Raphael, can be sensed in many of Torner de Semir’s female portraits, including the one we have here. It is precisely this blend of the old and the new where the originality of his work lies. What seems to have shaped him most is knowledge of the Romanesque and Gothic. His figures, often outlined with a thick dark line, evoke Gothic stained glass windows—luminous, beautiful in themselves and for themselves. A pupil of muralist and engraver Ricard Marlet, he learns what he considers most important: the discipline of drawing. With Master Marlet he becomes acquainted with Modernism and the Catalan Nineteenth-Century movement. 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, in his own style, with vivid colors such as pink and phosphorescent violet that leave no doubt about the artist’s emphasis, modernity, and charm. Moreover, if one looks closely, one can observe his use of collage techniques, embedding pieces 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 started holding solo exhibitions in Terrassa in 1968, later in other Catalan cities and in Paris (Espace and Boutique galleries). His work began in a Mediterranean figurativism, evolving then into abstraction, before 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, since in Barcelona he had the opportunity 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 bright, 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, thickly applied color that, together with the varied materials he uses as support, yields high-quality chromatic expressionist painting with a strong personality, defining the artist as a master.

The classical and the new fuse in the brushstrokes of Miquel Torner de Semir. 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: 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 Gerona is influenced by the ancients, Giotto, the Italian Renaissance, and the informal search of abstract painters. All this is the starting point of his painting; he cares about craft as much as concept, trying to be a bridge painter between the past and the 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 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’s almost incredible the work is a two-dimensional canvas, at first glance suggesting 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, in contrast to the serenity and vacant gaze of the faces that invite the observer to delve into the environment of the work and the artist’s thinking. Nevertheless, Torner de Semir has a distinct 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 peace of the spirit. The figure serves Semir to claim order and the rhythm of human actions.

According to Joan Lluís Montañé, a Barcelona native, 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 elaborated creations, where the imprint of determination and the contrasting color palette is evident. 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 creates the painting within the painting, and even attempts to place interpretations and abstract 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 a unique 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 must govern the realizations of the spirit. 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.: “The drawing, the fundamental, strong, precise, incisive line, establishes the form, delineates spaces in the meditated compositions that Torner de Semir presents. And then comes the seeing in a different way, the imaginative, the dreams that connect with the reality that he describes and outfits with a chromaticism that combines basic colors and 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 guides him along the path of the imaginative.”

Consistent with his view of the primitives, he has not worried too much about his 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, it is hard 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 XXV anniversary exhibition of the Spanish Constitution. Meanwhile, the Museo de la Real Casa de la Moneda in Madrid has organized a solo exhibition of his works.

Torner’s works have been shown 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 look at 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.
Guest of honor at the exhibition of the Cercle Español. 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.
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 espacios contemporáneos. 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.
Conmemorative Exhibition of the 25th Anniversary of the Spanish Constitution. Madrid.
Sala Constanti Art, Reus. Christmas Collective, 2009-Tarragona.
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