Vicente Llorens Poy

VICENTE LLORENS POY, (Villareal, Castellón, 1936 - 2014).
"Male nude".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 73 x 50 cm, 95 x 72 cm (frame).
Vicente Llorens Poy was a Spanish painter and sculptor. When he was only seven years old, he began his first studies of drawing, painting and modeling with who would always be his great teacher and mentor, the sculptor José Ortells. After winning with a drawing the first prize in the Provincial Contest of Plastic Arts sponsored by the Provincial Council of Castellón in 1949, two years later he entered the School of Fine Arts of San Carlos in Valencia. In 1952 he obtained a scholarship from the Patronato de Formación Profesional for higher studies that he kept throughout his career, completed with his move to Madrid, where he graduated as a professor of drawing at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes at the age of 19, at the same time that the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando granted him the scholarship of the Carmen del Río Foundation. In 1962 he won, by competition, a scholarship from the Italian government for further studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and the museums of Italy. Through another merit-based competition he obtained another grant from the French government that allowed him to reside in Paris during the 1965-1966 academic year, studying the trends of contemporary art.
As a painter he cultivated all the techniques: drawing, oil, engraving, etc., evolving in terms of subject matter; from the still lifes and landscapes of the first period, to the important facet as a portraitist, to the refined landscape of his stay in Madrid or the social realism in the figures of the youth "movida" of the seventies. Of special interest are his representations of nude figures, of an almost Renaissance classicism.
Without completely leaving aside the pictorial activity in the seventies, Llorens Poy also devoted himself to sculpture. In collections for collectors, Vicent Llorens Poy also made several works in bronze, of remarkable skill and delicacy, an evident legacy of his master José Ortells.
Vicente Llorens Poy received a Doctorate in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid, with the qualification of Cum Laude for his thesis on José Ortells and his sculptural work. He holds the Medaille Internationale des Arts, the Commendation for Civil Merit, the Medal for Merit in Fine Arts, the Cross of San Raimundo de Peñafort, Cross and Commendation of the Civil Order of Alfonso X the Wise, and in 1998 Pope John Paul II named him Knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great in its civil class. He was named Adoptive Son by the town of Torrehermosa (Zaragoza) and Favorite Son of Villarreal.
His works are in museums, public buildings and private collections in Spain, Italy, Vatican City, Switzerland, United Kingdom, France, Portugal, United States and several Latin American countries.