Miquel Torner de Semir (1938) - Menina

Signed by the artist at the bottom

The work is presented framed

Artwork dimensions: 73 cm high x 60 cm wide

Frame dimensions: 84 cm high x 71 cm wide

In good conservation 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 Garrotxa (Girona), the last living person born in this emblematic building surrounded by volcanoes (nowadays he lives in Sant Feliu de Guíxols). This fact marks his painterly vocation. A man of old Catalonia, cultured, he has always been drawn to the Middle Ages, Pirinean Romanesque, and primitive Gothic. The thread of Italian Renaissance art, especially painters of the Italian Quattrocento such as Fra Angélico or Rafael, is felt in many of Semir’s female portraits, including the one we are examining. It is precisely this mix of old and new where the originality of his work lies. What seems to have shaped him most is knowledge of Romanesque and Gothic art. His figures, often outlined with a thick dark line, evoke Gothic stained glass—luminous, beautiful in themselves. A disciple of muralist and engraver Ricard Marlet, he learns what for him is most important, 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 vivid color tones such as pink and fluorescent violet that leave no doubt about the artist’s emphasis, modernity and charm. Moreover, if you observe closely, you can see 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, later in other Catalan cities and in Paris (Espace and Boutique galleries). His work began in Mediterranean figuration, evolving into abstraction, and 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, as 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 vivid and rich colors. His work can be defined in a single word: VIDA. Thus, the magnificent works of this Catalan painter are characterized by their rich, blended color and the various materials he uses as support, yielding a high-quality chromatic expressionist painting with a strong 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 tracing on the canvas. Miquel achieves what very few before him have achieved: 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 Gerona is influenced by the ancients, Giotto, Italian Renaissance, and by the informal exploration 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 the past and the present, but also open to all that is new, to constant searching. An interesting contrast in Miquel’s work is how he presents people, places, and situations from old times, rendered 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 forms that it is almost unbelievable 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 strong faubiste accent, with an intense and expressive color palette, in contrast to the serenity and vacant gaze of the faces, inviting the viewer to delve into the surroundings of the work and the artist’s thinking. Nevertheless, Torner de Semir has a distinctive style based on the simplicity of execution within a very well-structured composition. The female figures have the calm, pausing forms of religious art and express the peace of the spirit. The figure serves Semir to claim order and rhythm in 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 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.”

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, pure colors to express feelings. Whenever possible he makes the painting within the painting, and even tries to place abstract interpretations and signs in his backgrounds. Thus he achieves a positive relation between the various forms of artistic expression that motivate him, and his plastic language is much richer and more appealing. He has a personal 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 guide 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, delineates spaces in the meditated compositions that Torner de Semir presents to us. And then comes the seeing differently, the imaginative, the dreams that hook up with the reality he describes and dresses with a chromaticism that combines basic colors, soft tones. It is a personal style that discovers the other reality of the landscape, of the figure. Interesting and captivating work, that traps the viewer and leads him along the path of the imaginative.”

Consistent with his vision of primitives, he has not worried much about his social projection toward his masters; these 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. 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 exhibition 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 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 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.

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’Imabonnaire 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. Schweiz.

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.