Paco de la Torre
Almería 1965

Paco de la Torre majored in Painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos in Valencia (1984-1989). Since the start of his career in the late 1980s he has produced figurative pictures in the style that grew up in Spain in the 1970s, which connects with avant-garde traditions. His art is based on connections between automatic processes and architecture, on the illusionism of geometry and the power of shadow. He is heavily influenced by the metaphysical paintings of Giorgio de Chirico. As his basis he takes autobiographical references to the landscapes and traditional architecture of Almería. He produced his first series in the late 1980s and in the 1990s, and subsequently linked up with the rationalist architecture of Guillermo Langle, whom he knew as a child and to whom he dedicated his series The Invisible Architect (2005). This interest in rationalist architecture is combined with automatic processes as mental patterns involving manual motor skills, neural residues and vitreous humour. The artist's work wanders along a path between tradition and avant-garde, between the figurative and the abstract.

He received grants from the Alfonso El Magnánimo Foundation at the Regional Government of Valencia and from the Cañada Blanch Foundation. He was awarded the Bancaixa Award in 2001 and the Caja Sur in 2003. His work has been shown at many venues since his first solo exhibition at the Círculo de Bellas Artes (Valencia, 1987), including the Valencia Institute of Modern Art (Valencia, 1999), the Cervantes Institute in Milan (Italy, 1999) and in Munich (Germany, 2003), the Almería Museum Art Centre (2005) and the Institute of Architects of Tarragona (2010).

Roberto Díaz