Excited “because I loved and appreciated the person and the artist” received today Gustavo Torner (Cuencia, 1925) news that he was the first winner of this award, which was awarded 10,000 euros aims to distinguish the trajectory of content creators and it is born every two years.
“It’s very gratifying to receive an award in your name, but sad that he is not“says the 97-year-old artist with a career 84 years in the art world. While acknowledging that a reward “serves to encourage or confirm, they’re like giving candy to a child when he’s good.”
Torner, a self-taught artist, Gerardo Rueda and Fernando Zobel one of the first initiatives to introduce new movements of modern art in Spain, in the 1960sresulting in the creation of Cuenca Spanish Museum of Abstract Art. They were also the founders sink groupTo which he belongs together with artists such as Sempere Antonio Lorenzo, Manuel Millares, Sempere, Canogar, Luis Feito, Chirino or Segundo Gámez.
“Sempere made a modest art, not a circus, that’s what’s in fashion right now”
He says he only has good memories of Eusebio Sempere. “You can’t remember a person bit by bit, you can’t have special memories because you have to have memories of everything.” And he assures that he’s a “very nice person, nice and has a great job”, but that’s “he made an art that wasn’t spectacular, not a circus now fashionable; You can’t generalize, but there’s a lot of stories, a lot of bullshit.”
Gustavo Torner, who became famous in 2916 National Graphic Arts Award, available in MACA funds with study white-black scrap (1961) and some graphic works, The Siglo XX collection that Sempere donated to the city.
The artist who will receive his award at an event to be held in Alicante in JanuaryHe made his first abstract work in 1956, Sourceand from there an artistic phase nestled in informality began. He made his sculpture in Madrid. reflections named after Cubes Square, because sculpture activity occupied a large part of Torner’s activities between 1971 and 1977.
He also collaborated in the design of spaces as important as some of the rooms of the Prado Museum. Cuenca Cathedral or the same Cuenca Museum of Abstract Art.
In 1991, the Reina Sofia Museum dedicated a retrospective to him, a center where the artist went. In 2004, he donated nearly 600 works. Among his awards are the Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X El Sabio and Gold Medal of Merit in Fine Artsamong other distinctions.
Jury and evaluation
The jury consisted of a Cultural Council Member. Antonio Manres; curator of MACA, Rosa Castellsand professionals Jordi Teixidor de Otto, Yolanda Romero Gómez, Isabel Tejeda Martín and Daniel García Andújar. The decision to award Torner was unanimous, “because the quality and relevance of artistic production as a whole and, as he was one of the pioneers in the renewal of contemporary artistic languages in Spain in the mid-20th century, a renewal that constitutes an alternative to the academic proposals of the first Franco regime after the autarky period. He experimented with photography and informal painting, In the following decade, roads are paved with echoes of neo-dada, which was incorporated into geometric abstraction and sculpture in the 70s”.
Cuenca and Alicante are two of the first museums created by artists during the Franco regime, and a transition to an act of generosity and ethical engagement with contemporary languages and a new generation of Spanish men and women without comparison. In this sense, the numbers Sempere and Torner have the same precision sociocultural context and responsibility for artist roles beyond the studio, their commitment to contemporary art, and their involvement in the design of institutions. Gustavo Torner has donated more than 500 works to the Spanish people for the enjoyment of all.