HOW HAVE YOU ENDED UP DOING THIS?

NACHO TORRA (born June 1, 1989)

I was born in Gijón, Spain. I grew up painting, I studied Fine Arts in Cuenca, Spain, and I finished my studies at the Pinacoteca di Brera, in Milan, Italy.

I made drawings, paintings, sculptures and installations since 2010. At that time, I was discovered by Rafael Doctor (cultural manager and art historian) who was the director of MUSAC. I exhibited my work in commercial galleries, as well as in some collective exhibitions, while I was studying.

After completing my studies, I began to connect with the world of fashion. I started working for Zara in 2015, and after a year as accessories designer. I started traveling very often all over the world to create image content. I am currently directing image content for them, but I also work for other creative projects with fashion magazines such as Self Service or Brands recently as LAVIN.

After almost 5 years out of the art world, I wanted to start a new project related to painting, but outside the circuit of art galleries ... and that is how MAISON du PEINTRE was born. I will start this project on my 30th birthday. as the end of a period and the beginning of a new way of presenting my projects ... Mdu P is a workshop with which many painters would often dream.

A quiet and pleasant place for creation. Benefiting from exposure to natural light with the seaport in sight.

ABOUT MY WORK.

• 01

In an artist’s first solo exhibition it is possible to definitively confirm which are the coordinates
that will determine his future. This is Nacho Torra’s first solo show and what we are going to find in is an extremely rich pictorial background with an iconography that builds difficult-to-read but possible scenes.

Nacho Torra has an obsessive way of giving life to his paintings. He paints and repaints, giving as a result scenes supported by a secret world that hides great tension and is directly related to the basic constructive keys of surrealism. What we see is always much more than what we see. Each one of the paintings is a short story told beyond its linearity and rationality.

We are in the presence of a scene, a stage, a support and a representation… we are in the presence of
painting in its pure state trying to build a new and possible universe.

RAFAEL DOCTOR, 2010

• 02

When Nacho Torra made his first solo exhibition, he was hardly 20 years old and was still studying in the Faculty of Arts of Cuenca. He showed in La Fresh Gallery (Madrid) his paintings full of joy, his nimble lines and his uncompleted stories – scenes which evoked something old,
but which were very young indeed. Two years later, the Spanish artist comes back to La Fresh Gallery to show his new work – more than 40 paintings, through which he reflects on one of the most essential aspects of the still life genre: flower painting. A genre represented
throughout history by artists such as Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Hockney or Henri Rousseau,
which served as a reference and starting point for the artist.

In Nacho Torra’s work there’s something secretly contradictory. It is evidenced in this
exhibition called “Bring me flowers while I’m not dead” in which he creates an obsessively changing movement through determined strokes and bright colors – he paints and repaints,removing and adding new elements once and again, his paintings only static when watched by the observers. Nacho is obsessed with the creative process and the way a painting is built. And it is precisely this experience what he wants to share. This is the reason why his exhibition is the result of a research process about all kinds of plants and vegetation, in particular about the
flowers brought to cemeteries.

“I was interested in how we bring flowers to people who are sick or dead, and the fact that flowers have a very short life. I started to visit cemeteries to observe the flowers that people brought to their relatives and I noticed there is a ‘cemetery fauna’: ants, butterflies, worms, flies…” This time, he has gone further – not only he represents it on his paintings, but also he has created a dichotomy between the connotations of bringing flowers to a lifeless place and the way he represents these flowers, so vital. The flowers represented on this series are not dying, they are full of life. Through this work, he has established a direct connection between life and death.

You can feel the autobiographic elements on each of the paintings and a system of affective symbols behind the floral motifs. Nacho Torra’s style is related to the avant-gard aesthetic and his childish lines remind the Compagnie de l’Art Brut and Jean Dubuffet’ painting. Once again, as Rafael Doctor said about these silent stories: “What we see is always much more than what we see”.

TANIA PARDO, 2012

ACADEMIC TRAINING

• 2007 - 2013 Degree in Arts at the University of Castilla la Mancha, Cuenca, Spain.

• 2011 Fourth year of the degree at the Arts Academy of Brera, Milan, Italy.

• 2007 High school studies in Arts at the Universidad Laboral High School, Gijón, Spain.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

• 2017 Enjoy this fleeting light,solo show in La Fresh Gallery Madrid.• 2015 We all have good tast , TUB GALLERY Miami.
• 2014 A ray of Light , Feria ArteBA Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2014 Volcán, Room Art Fair , La Fresh Gallery Madrid. • 2014 Participation in “Room Art Fair” Comtemporary Art Fair in Madrid.
• 2014 Participation in “arteBA”, Contemporary Art Fair in Bueno Aires.
• 2014 “BIG”. Group exhibition. La Fresh Gallery, Madrid.
• 2013 “Marca España”. Group exhibition. European Creative Center, Berlin.
• 2013 “Eclipse”. Editorial project. La Fresh Gallery, Madrid.
• 2013 “Bring me flowers ”. Solo exhibition. Galería Adriana Suárez, Gijón.
• 2012 “Synchronicity”. Group exhibition. Espacio Continuo Gallery,Badajoz.
• 2012 “Bring me flowers”. Solo exhibition. La Fresh Gallery, Madrid.
• 2012 “Out there”. Group exhibition. MUCA Roma, Mexico D.F.
• 2012 “Androméstico”. Group exhibition “a3bandas”.Fresh Gallery, Madrid.
• 2011 Participation in “Feriarte”, Contemporary Art Fair in Oviedo Spain.
• 2011 “Container inside”. Group show. Ciudad de la Cultura, Santiago.
• 2011 “A big family”. Group exhibition. La Fresh Gallery, Madrid.
• 2011 “Din a 3”. Group exhibition. Art&Design, Barcelona.
• 2011 “Making way for monsters and angels”. Galería Alegría, Spain.
• 2010 “Making way for monsters and angels”. La Fresh Gallery, Madrid.
• 2010 “Senescence”. Publication for Ediciones Puré, Madrid.

AWARDS

• 2014 Classified for the Short List of the Griffin Art Prize Iberia, London.

• 2013 Classified for the Young Painter Awards of Gijón (Spain).

• 2013 Classified for the XLIV National Arts Contest of Luarca (Spain).

• 2006 Second “Primavera” Prize. Ateneo Jovellanos, Gijón (Spain).

PRESS

• El Mundo

“A very young promise”, El Mundo.

• ABC

“The Spain that marks”, ABC.

“The more prepared young history are not a lost generation”, ABC

• El Comercio

“Living objects”, El Comercio.

“Flowers painted for the living”, El Comercio.

MduP