(b Cuenca, 13 July 1925). Spanish painter, sculptor and architect. Self-taught as an artist, he showed figurative works at his first exhibition in 1951, but by 1956 he became interested in representing nature for its own sake. He was especially attracted to the mineral world, with its complicated corrugated textures. These interests, partly accounted for by his training in forestry, were also aligned with the aesthetic preference for textured surfaces demonstrated by other painters working within the terms of Art informel and especially with the techniques of matter painting. Torner’s style matured in the 1960s with the creation of his ‘complex images’, in which he presented the contrasting qualities of surface, volume, light and colour by giving each a different treatment. Obsessive Awakening (1973; Seville, Mus. A. Contemp.) is a good example of the refinement of his later abstract work. It was during this period, too, that he and Fernando Zóbel founded the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español in Cuenca. Torner’s varied work also encompassed collages, sculpture, tapestries, interior decoration and exhibition design (e.g. for the Fundación Juan March in Madrid).