Bernardo Torrens was born in Madrid in 1957. In spite of the fact that he is virtually self-taught, he is a master painter, and can be securely positioned in the tradition of Spanish realism from the seventeenth century to the present. He is also a master of his medium, the airbrush, achieving nuances of color and surface texture that are remarkable, even for this much-touted tool of the twentieth-century “superrealists.”

In Torrens’s work one recognizes both the heightened reality and gravitas that are hallmarks of Spanish realism. The canon was set in the seventeenth century by artists such as Zurbarán, Ribera, Sánchez Cotán, and Velázquez. In general, the seventeenth century represented a moment of expansion of artistic vision in Europe, under the aegis of the baroque and with the introduction of new categories of representation. The painter’s canvas was made to carry more information – panoramic landscapes, overflowing banquet tables, complex interior settings described with all the appropriate trappings, hosts of angels, saints, and heroes depicted in epic narratives. But the Spanish realists, though all-embracing in terms of subject matter from which to draw, tended to concentrate attention on a few objects, or even a single object. However, these excerpted objects, handled with great sobriety and rendered with exquisite detail, hold great power. Visual titillation draws the viewer to the work, but the cerebral and meditative sensibilities soon take over. It is precisely such qualities that underpin Torrens’s work.

In good part, the message of Torrens’s art is about the elemental nature of being. The subjects of his paintings, primarily men and women, are drawn from his immediate surroundings, and in that sense they are the equivalent of the Everyman of medieval morality plays. They are often presented nude, and in the full bloom of youth. Although not classical in their proportions, the surfaces of their bodies, whether clothed or unclothed, are idealized. They pose with ritualistic noble restraint, expressing fundamental concepts such as masculine and feminine energies (the so-called yin and yang), tender love, fragile beauty, pride, distress, and prejudice.

Torrens acknowledges his debt to the seventeenth-century Seville artists, and notes that he draws particular inspiration from the work of Velázquez. Michelangelo, a master of form, gesture, and line configured to elicit emotional response, is also an important source (for example, the haunting form of the famous early Pietà, especially as seen from the back). Amongst Torrens’s older contemporaries, Antonio Lopez-Garcia [ADD ACCENTS] and Claudio Bravo stand as the leading masters of later-twentieth-century Spanish Realism, producing genre and still-life paintings with consummate technical skill. Certainly Torrens’s technical expertise owes something to the challenge posed to younger artists by both Lopez Garcia and Bravo. There is also some similarity in the physical appearance of Torrens’s and Bravo’s figures. But Torrens points out that the art is generated from opposing camps. The work of both older masters is about response to externals. Lopez Garcia is noted for the painstakingly long time he takes to make his pictures; for example, he may study a tree as it appears in the same month for several years. Bravo's world is quite comprehensive, but again the focus is on externals, a less weighty message.

Torrens, on the other hand, is concerned with internal mechanisms; his technique serves idea; his art is the mirror of psyche. Before turning to painting in 1980, Torrens had all but completed a degree in medicine. His masterful command of anatomy, physiognomy, and psychology as a result of that experience translates into a perfect artistic alchemy where chemistry, matter, and spirit are joined. Torrens composes and lights his subjects, captures them with a camera, and paints from black-and-white prints. He scales up only the silhouettes, which become stencil-like outlines. Then, in pass after pass with the airbrush, he fabricates the tonalities and textures that are a hallmark of his meticulous and enchanting surfaces. In a small painting in the Seavest collection, Desnudo (year), for example, an exquisitely rendered female torso is presented in sepia tones. The monochromatics serve as the visual counterpart of the subconscious, rather than of the world of vision and verisimilitude.

In our painting Lakme (1995), by contrast, the pitch is heightened through color and scale. A lone young woman represents that moment of rapture and entanglement as love takes hold. Those familiar with opera will recognize her; she is the daughter of the Brahman priest, whose ill-fated love for a British soldier leads to her demise. In her beauty, her nudity, the translucency of her flesh, her open pose, her dancelike stance, and the privacy of her passion she is palpable and vulnerable. The idea, as expressed by Torrens, is as much a response to the music of the composer Leo Delibes ("Neath the dome," Lakme, act 1, aria 5) as it is to the story line. The beautiful striped cloth wound in on itself follows the spiraling ascent of the music as it enwraps the woman. Like the serpent of the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden, it signals her doom. The jungle setting is suggested in the choice of color (lush green), and in the network of broad, open brushstrokes that describes the background. In this rare moment, Torrens abandons his airbrush for a paintbrush. Clearly Torrens, too, was carried away. Lakme signals a rare syncretistic moment for the artist, and he has suggested that the painting might be best appreciated while listening to Delibes's aria.

©by Virginia Anne Bonito, revised "Get Real" Bernardo Torrens essay, April 24, 2000.

For a more detailed printed view of the collection order the book:
	Get Real: Contemporary American Realism from the Seavest Collection Virginia Anne Bonito. Foreword by Michael Philip Mezzatesta, pp. 138, 68 colorplates, 2 b/w photographs Exhibition at DUMA April 4-July 6, 1997. Hard cover $40.00 Soft cover $25.00 To order contact: Duke University Museum of Art Click on Publications