For most Valencians, Daniel Torres is part of the DNA of this city’s visual image. In the 1980s, the fine line and cheerful watercolor style that was declared indebted to the teachings of Miguel Calatayud flooded the city, along with that of the group known as the “New Valencian School”. Micharmut, Sento, Mique Beltrán, Manel Gimeno, Daniel Torres, and Calatayud himself were responsible for an image change broken by a geometric and powerful line, in which the fonts took on a life of their own.
They became associated with design and a new architectural aesthetic, but Torres’ evolution has shown that something else really lies beneath this clean line. Looking back in time, the cartoonist’s forty-year career can be summed up in one concept: his passion for storytelling through cartoons, but the author’s true intentions are almost always hidden in his brilliant graphic sense. The original Claudio Cueco and Opium were already misunderstood as the author’s satirical attacks on the genre, when they were truly excuses to scrutinize and absorb the narrative mechanisms of the dark and cheap genre like a sponge. The perennial Roco Vargas saga may be seen as a review of science fiction in soap opera terms, but the truth is it’s a detailed study of the evolution of comics over time: first, out of fascination with Calatayud reinterpreting Alex Raymond. , but later sometimes articulated, as he did in The Eighth day, by his style camouflaging the lines of greats from MacCay and Milton Caniff to Moebius, telling stories without ceasing, affirming the author’s position as a great demiurge.
A study that led him to a huge project like La Casa. A story of conquest that seems to reconcile the architectural profession with that of a comic book artist, but shows a rigid chronology of human imagination and creation, blurring the lines between science and art, fiction and reality. Some teachers and the whole truth (The Publishing Standard) is an atypical comic, twelve pages long, that might be mistaken for a portfolio but constitutes the greatest declaration of love for the storytelling and comics profession that its author can remember. Torres, taking the language of comics to the extreme, pours out everything she knows about the comics artist profession on every page to share with the readers the phrase “This is how it was made”, which reveals the behind the scenes of both the creation of the comic book and its creation. the artistic process (including the outline of the plate) and the complex path that leads to imagining a story. His paintings are daring compositions that look like illustrations because of their baroque architecture, but are surprisingly easy to read like the Sunday page of a series of newspapers; an artist in a masterful filigree where personal and created dialogue intertwine to the delight of an astonished reader in front of Torres’ visual spectacle.
The whole truth is there: he does not keep anything hidden, he does not forget anything. What they read as a child, influenced them as an adult, their academic education, what they created… In twelve pages, we join the miracle of artistic creation, the impossible equation that biology, chemistry and physics combine to transcend human beings. transcending the limits of science, entering art in the flooded fantasy world where anything is possible. Torres learned this alchemical secret from his teachers and is willing to show it as the great teacher he is today. Don’t miss this opportunity.