Considered the oldest painter in the world, the Vigo artist Luis Torras Martínez, who was born in 1912, the same year that the ‘Titanic’ sank, has died at the age of 111.
In an interview with EFE in 2022, Torras, who then lived with his wife, María Jesús, who died last year, said that every day he got up at 7:30 to stand in front of an easel without needing to find a special motivation to do so. continue painting.
“The desire to improve. One does not stand still. You have to improve, you always have to improve. That is enough to paint,” said the centenarian painter then in a conversation that took place in the center of a studio where oil paintings were piled up. , the easels and the pigments he used. He assured that “you always want to improve” and concluded that painting was his “life.”
The main themes of Torras’ painting have been static human figures, landscapes, still lifes and still lifes, and a good part of his work is in the Casa das Artes in Vigo, where the Torras Collection is located, but there is also his work in the Reina Sofía in Madrid, in the Quiñones de León Museum in Vigo, in the Pontevedra Museum or in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago.
He was a follower of artists such as Piero della Francesca, whom he admired the luminosity he achieved in his frescoes, or El Greco and Leonardo da Vinci, “super painters” for him.
Torres had persistent deafness that had accompanied him since the Civil War. “They shot me there and ‘scared’ me,” he said.
He cared little about his legacy and even less about how he would be remembered: “When I die, it’s over and that’s it, right? I have no desire? A dead donkey, barley to the tail,” he said.
