Miquel Torner de Semir (1938) - Menina - NO RESERVE

Signed by the artist on the bottom

The work is presented framed (the frame has some damage)

Dimensions of the work: 38 cm in height x 32 cm in width

Dimensions of the frame: 46 cm in height x 40 cm in width

The state of the work is good

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

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 (currently he lives in San 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. 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, like the one we have here. It is precisely that blend between ancient and modern 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—luminescent, beautiful in themselves and for themselves. A disciple of mural painter and engraver Ricard Marlet, he learns what he considers most important, the discipline of drawing. Under Maestro Marlet he encounters 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 would visit the Prado Museum and absorb Velázquez’s painting, choosing to reproduce the meninas to his liking, with his own style, using vivid color tones such as pink and phosphorescent violet that leave no doubt about the emphasis, modernity, and likability of the artist. Moreover, if observed closely, one can notice 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 started holding solo exhibitions in Terrassa in 1968, later doing so in other Catalan cities and in Paris (Espace gallery and Boutique). His work began in a Mediterranean figurativism, evolving then into abstraction, before returning to a figuration of 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 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 palette of great vivacity, which, combined 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 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 laying 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 by the informal search of abstract painters. All 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 search. An interesting contrast in Torner de Semir’s work is how he presents people, places, and situations from ancient times, rendered with modern painting techniques. This eminent 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, at first glance, it seems unbelievable that the work is a two-dimensional canvas, as if the painting were more a sum of textures from a three-dimensional world.

Some of his works have a prominent faubiste accent, with an intense and expressive color palette, in contrast with the serenity and blank gaze of the faces that invites the observer to delve into the work’s environment and the artist’s thinking. Nevertheless, Torner de Semir has a style of his own based on the simplicity of realization 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 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, a generator of especially elaborated creations, where the imprint of determination and the contrasted color palette is noticeable. He exhibits figures, landscapes, and compositions that imply a clear exercise of 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 paints the painting within the painting, and even tries to place 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 style of his own based on the simplicity of execution within a very well-structured composition. His female figures have the paused 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 communicates positive sensations to those who know his work."

For J. Llop S.: "Drawing, the fundamental, strong, precise, incisive stroke, establishes the form, delimitates 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 connect with the reality he 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. An interesting and captivating work that traps the viewer and leads him along the path of the imaginative."

Consistent with his vision of primitive art, he has not worried too much about his 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, a comprehensive compilation of his curriculum is difficult. Currently he exhibits permanently at La Galería Arcadia in Madrid.

In 2003 he is 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. Meanwhile, the Museo de la Real Casa de la Moneda in Madrid has organized an 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, Vigo, Oviedo, etc. Let us now look at, below, some of the artist’s most important exhibitions in Catalan art:

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.
Honored guest at the exhibition of the Cercle Espanyol. Dreux - France.
Salon d’Automne. Clermont-Ferrand - France.
Grand Prix la Femme et l’Imabonaise 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.
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 collective, 2009-Tarragona.
#parisapartment