Gustavo Torner

GUSTAVO TORNER (Cuenca, 1925).
"Homage to Sempere".
Serigraphy on paper. Copy 26/75.
Signed, dated and justified.
Measurements: 64 x 54 cm; 80 x 70 cm (frame).
Painter and sculptor member of the so-called "Cuenca school" along with Gerardo Rueda and Fernando Zóbel (which was one of the first initiatives to introduce in Spain the novelties of modern art and its recent currents in the 1960s), Gustavo Torner was self-taught. He studied Forestry Engineering, and his talent for drawing led him to be commissioned to make some botanical plates for "Flora forestal de España", which would influence his later works. In 1950 he traveled to France and Italy, also receiving influences from what he saw and learned in these countries; a year later he moved to Cuenca, where he continued his engineering career. It was at this time that he became friends with Antonio Saura, and began to paint. In 1956 he began to work in a purely abstract language, within the informalist current, in open contrast with his first works ("of nature"). In the mid-1960s, his artistic approaches became more complex with the artist's goal of achieving greater expressiveness: wood and metal replace canvas, and he uses a wide variety of materials; he also creates installations with a great scenographic sense. Between 1971 and 1977 most of his works were sculptures: mainly large works with simple geometric shapes (which does not imply technical simplicity, but rather the opposite), using all kinds of materials and exploring a great variety of textures in them.
In addition to fine arts, he has worked in diverse fields such as scenography, and has also collaborated with the design of significant spaces such as some rooms of the Prado Museum or the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art in Cuenca. He is currently represented in this museum, as well as in the Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, the MNCARS, the Municipal de Arte Contemporáneo in Madrid, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Fundación Juan March in Palma de Mallorca (Museo de Arte Español Contemporáneo) and other collections, both public and private. It is also worth mentioning the conversion of the Church of San Pablo in Cuenca, in 2005, into the "Espacio Torner", with some forty sculptures and paintings by the artist in a permanent exhibition.