Miquel Torner de Semir (1938) - Mujer con flor

Signed by the artist at the bottom

The work is presented framed

Dimensions of the work: 65 cm high x 50 cm wide

Dimensions of the frame: 82 cm high x 68 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), the last living person born in this emblematic construction 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 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, can be felt in many of Torner de Semir’s female portraits, including the one we have here. It is precisely this mix between the old and the new where the originality of his work lies. What seems to have formed him most is the knowledge of the Romanesque and Gothic. His figures, often outlined by a thick dark line, evoke Gothic stained glass—luminous, beautiful in themselves. A pupil of the muralist and engraver Ricard Marlet, he learns what is most important to him, the discipline of drawing. With Maestro Marlet he encounters Modernism and the Catalan Nouveaucentisme. 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 taste, with his own style, with vivid color tones such as pink and fluorescent violet that leave no doubt about the artist’s emphasis, modernity and charm. Moreover, if one looks closely, one can find the artist’s use of collage technique, 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 began holding solo exhibitions in Terrassa in 1968, subsequently in other Catalan cities and in Paris (Espace and Boutique galleries). His work began in a Mediterranean figurativism, later opening into abstraction, to return to a figurative modern concept. He is ultimately considered one of the most important exponents of Mediterranean painting.

All these tendencies were not unknown to him since in Barcelona he had the chance to meet the Dau al Set group. In the Dau al Set school he meets 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: VIDA. Thus, the magnificent work of this Catalan painter is characterized by its rich and thick color, 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. The boundary 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 a 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 pursuit of abstract painters. All this is the starting point of his painting; he cares as much or more about the craft as about the concept, trying to be a bridge painter between past and present, but also open to everything new, to constant searching. An interesting contrast in Miquel’s work is how he presents people, places and situations from ancient times molded with modern painting techniques. This distinguished 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, seemingly at first glance more like a sum of textures from a three-dimensional world.

Some of his works have a prominent Fauvist 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 environment of the work and the artist’s thoughts. 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 inner calm. The figure serves Semir to claim order and rhythm in human actions.

According to Joan Lluís Montañé, Barcelonés, member of the International Association of Art Critics, the prestigious Catalan painter Torner de Semir, in his extensive pictorial oeuvre, “is interested in composition and color, generating especially elaborated creations, where one notes the imprint of determination and the contrasted color palette. He exhibits figures, landscapes, and compositions that imply a clear exercise of pictorial academicism in which he does not renounce certain formal and technical innovations, all within an unmistakable personal plastic seal.”

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 painting within the painting, and even tries to place in its backgrounds interpretations and abstract signs. In this way he achieves a positive relation between the diverse forms of artistic expression that motivate him and his plastic language is much richer and more attractive. He has his own 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 serenity that must govern the realizations of the spirit. The figure serves to demand order and rhythm in human actions; his painting is ethical. He communicates positive sensations easily to those who know his work".

For J. Llop S.: “The drawing, the fundamental stroke, strong, precise, incisive, establishes the form, defines 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 link with the reality he describes and dresses with chromaticism that combines basic colors, 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 the imaginative.”

Consistent with his vision of the primitives, he has not worried too much about his social projection toward his teachers, who were sometimes unnamed, and although his works are in many countries, he has exhibited in Europe, America and Japan; it is difficult to make an exhaustive compilation of his résumé. Currently he 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 exhibition. 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, Gerona, Valencia, Seville, Pontevedra, Oviedo, etc. Next, here are some of the artist’s most important exhibitions:

Most significant exhibitions
Amics de les Arts. Terrassa - Barcelona.

Pinacoteca. Sabadell - Barcelona.

Sociéte des Artiste Independants. Paris.

Grand Palais. Paris.

Dan Art, Béziers-France.

Galerie Espace. Paris - Beaubourg.

Lyons Club. Chartres Doyen - France.

Honored guest at the exhibition of Cercle Espanyol. Dreux - France.

Salon d’Automne. Clermont Ferrant - France.

Grand Prix la Femme et l’Imabonare Jeanne Gatineau. Paris.

Sala Gavina. Palamós - Girona.

Sala Clará, Olot-Barcelona.

Espai cultural Francolí-Barcelona.

Galerie Boutique. Paris, France.

La Galerie de lHotel Meridien. Paris.

L’Atelier. Platja d’Aro.Girona.

Ausstellungsraume der Mineralquelle Eptigen. Suisse.

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. Francia.

Galería Campo u Campo. Bélgica.

Galería B.C.S. Estrasburgo.Francia.

Haus Arnold. Frankfurt am Main. Alemania.

Haus Berlinghoff. Heidelberg.Alemania.

Naumilenium. Barcelona.

Lart century art. Barcelona.

Real Club Náutico de Sanxenxo. Pontevedra.

Picassomio.com Madrid.

Galeries d Art Christian Dazy. Dijon-Megève-France.

Exposición Conmemorativa del 25 Aniversario de la Constitución Española. Madrid.

Sala Constanti Art, Reus. Colectiva de Navidad, 2009-Tarragona.