Review: Jordi Torrent Colomer

The loneliness of a bicycle in the last of the afternoon sun, the silence of a library, the buzz of a terrace, romance rocking a gondola… Jordi Torrent is a sharp-eyed observer who elegantly captures the sediment that life gives off right in front of us. A skilled draughtsman with an enormous output, his artworks have won countless prizes, especially in quick-painting competitions, his great love.

Painting life as it goes by

Ever since human beings became aware of themselves they have longed to catch life in images. That longing turned into an obsession in the second half of the 19th century, when a group of painters reacted against academicism in order to «impress» life. No other style in the recent history of art has connected with the general public the way that one did.

Jordi Torrent has built his artistic career on the maxims of Impressionism, a melancholy kind of painting caught between the brightness of the instant and the nostalgia of the (inexorable) passing of time. That is why he connects so well with the public, because he demands no aesthetic groundwork beforehand: it's about savouring life on a canvas, with no instruction manual required.

But like the barest poetry, the kind that can switch on our most private memory, Jordi Torrent's artworks bring back memories… to each of us, our own.

Two bicycles parked in a square with a street market (Torroella) hands us the summer breeze, shorts, a stroll and the smell of fresh fruit. How can you not travel back in time and (re)visit the village square, listen to the locals haggling with the stallholders and breathe in the scent of calm?

And the sea (Caloret). How easy it is to hear the murmur of the waves, the racket of the children and feel the water on our feet in one of so many summers.

But life doesn't only go by slowly and quietly, it also speeds up on Mondays, on the pedestrian crossings of big cities (Día de trabajo). Then we feel the metro, the tie around our neck and the honking of cars in a hurry.

And it gets dark. The loneliness of a half-smoked cigarette stirs up bittersweet sensations, of the end of the night, of going home in the half-light (He dejado de fumar).

Quick painting to be savoured slowly

With almost a hundred prizes to his name, Jordi Torrent is a painter with well-deserved recognition. His fondness for quick painting has brought him plenty of rewards. This format demands a sixth sense from the artist when it comes to choosing the subject. Most of the time, landscape is the genre that wins in this kind of competition, but close-up artworks with a touch of local colour also work: a window, a building, a fountain and so on.

But the most important thing is the painter's ability to synthesise, the talent for picking out the most attractive and lyrical elements of a scene in order to switch on the viewer's emotions. Along with that, technical skill is key to setting down that synthesis of the subject in the shortest possible time.

If we take a look at Jordi Torrent's artworks, we'll see that the Catalan artist ticks every box of the good «quick» painter. And it is in choosing the key elements of the subject that Torrent's talent comes to the surface.

Venice and New York

We didn't want to miss the chance to mention two series the painter has devoted to two of the most famous cities in the world. On the one hand, Torrent pays tribute to Venice, where several of the most important landscape painters in the history of art learned their trade. That one-off alloy of light, water, colour and stone is captured with great delicacy by the Catalan artist in several artworks.