From the Sergio Gonzalez-Tornero exhibition: Hercules, 1989, oil on canvas; Variations on a Mountain: Chinese Landscape, 1989, oil on canvas; The Comics, 1973, acrylic on canvas.
NEW CANAAN, CT, April 16, 2024—Silvermine is honored to present a special exhibition of work by Sergio Gonzalez-Tornero, one of the legendary artists from the Silvermine Guild. His vibrant and intricate prints and paintings can be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, and the Museum of Modern Art—as well as in major museums throughout Europe and the Americas. The exhibition is on view now at Silvermine and will run through May 16.
One of South America’s finest modern printmakers, Gonzalez-Tornero was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1927. He studied art in Chile and Brazil before finishing his education at the Slade School of Art, London (1958), and with printmaker Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris (1959-1962) where he met his wife, printmaker and Silvermine artist Adrienne Cullom. They moved to New York City in 1962 and later to Mahopac, New York.
In the 1975 exhibit catalog at the Gruenebaum Gallery, Ltd., NYC, Thomas Gruenebaum wrote: “In these elegant, powerful oils one can appreciate his masterful technique. His transition from the printed medium to the painted one gives a new dimension to a vision which grows in strength and originality with each canvas. His world is a surrealistic one with strong roots in the past, evoking thoughts of Hieronymus Bosch and Francisco Goya as they might have viewed our modern world…. Tornero’s portraits seem to be of alien creatures, grotesque but at the same time elegant and humorous—yet we can recognize ourselves in them, as a part of a world never fully at peace with itself. Tornero’s work, once seen, is impossible to forget.”
During the past forty years, Gonzalez-Tornero’s original etchings and aquatints have been the subject of solo exhibitions in Chile, the United States, Canada, Italy, Germany, and France. His subjects include solitary images of wild animals, complex explorations of the psychological and the spiritual, and landscapes that delight with a synthesis of bold and delicate lines. He found the work of the Haida peoples in the Canadian archipelago of Haida Gwaii deeply spiritual. Their culture became a strong influence on his art throughout his career.
He received many awards, including the UNESCO prize at the International Biennial in Krakow, Poland, in 1966, and the first prize at the 10th Biennial of Prints from Latin America and the Caribbean, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1993. Public Collections in France, England, Poland, Austria, Switzerland, and Mexico all include examples of his etchings and engravings. Gonzalez-Tornero was awarded a fellowship by the New York State Foundation for the Arts in 1987 and a grant from the Adolph and Ester Gottlieb Foundation in 1990. He was a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists, Boston Printmakers, the Philadelphia Print Club, and the Silvermine Guild of Artists.
