José Roberto Torrent

JOSÉ ROBERTO TORRENT PRATS (Ciudadella, Menorca 1904 - 1990).
"Ciudadella, Menorca", 1963.
Oil on cardboard.
Signed in the lower right corner. Signed, dated and titled on the back.
Measurements: 36 x 44 cm; 42 x 49 cm (frame).

Torrent Prats was the most important painter of Menorca during the 20th century. From young he shows vocation for the drawing and the painting, receiving lessons of the Teacher Mollet. In his beginnings he dedicated himself to modernist illustration and humorous drawings, winning national prizes. At the age of 21 Torrent qualifies two of his works as his "first oil painting" and "first painting", a marine and some country houses, where incipient traces of his plastic language appear. He travels to Paris and northern Spain to look for new subjects for his paintings and ways of painting. He paints Juan el Loco, a fundamental work in which he applies an expressionist treatment of the landscape linked to the psychological situation of the character. He eliminates the shadows, raises the horizons, cleans the palette of dark colors and reinterprets the landscapes with post-impressionist technique. Torrent died in Ciutadella de Menorca on November 13, 1990.