José Roberto Torrent

JOSÉ ROBERTO TORRENT PRATS (Ciudadela, Menorca, 1904–1990).
"Country House," Ciudadela, 1973.
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner. Signed, dated, titled, and located on the reverse.
Measurements: 38 x 47 cm.

Torrent Prats was Menorca’s most important painter of the 20th century. From a young age, he showed a talent for drawing and painting, receiving lessons from Maestro Mollet. Early in his career, he focused on Modernist-style illustration and humorous drawings, winning national awards. At age 21, Torrent described two of his works as his “first oil painting” and “first painting”—a seascape and a scene of farmhouses—in which the early traces of his artistic language are evident. He traveled to Paris and throughout northern Spain in search of new subjects for his paintings and new ways of painting. He painted *Juan el Loco*, a seminal work in which he applied an expressionist treatment to the landscape linked to the character’s psychological state. He eliminated shadows, raised the horizons, cleared his palette of dark colors, and reinterpreted landscapes using a Post-Impressionist technique. Torrent died in Ciutadella, Menorca, on November 13, 1990.