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Between the One, the Two, and the Three
Catalogue text by Isabel Tejeda May 2001
2001 Exhibition, "Continuous Spatial Tracing-Ariadne's Thread," painting 2001, "COMBINABLE Geometric Words," ceramics 2001 by ILUMINADA GARCÍA-TORRES. Catalogue and exhibition at the House of Culture in El CAMPELLO (Alicante), May 12–June 20, 2001.
Years ago, ILUMINADA GARCÍA-TORRES (Elche 1949, Alicante) evolved from figurative painting to abstraction. Her earlier work drew inspiration from the silence of Morandi and the obsession with capturing essence characteristic of Antonio López. At just 16, she was López's student at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, and she would paint with him again twenty years later in a workshop he led at the Círculo de Bellas Artes.
Last year, at the Institut Municipal de Cultura in Elche, ILUMINADA GARCIA-TORRES presented a magnificent exhibition curated by Isabel Chinchilla, who perfectly understood the painter's evolutionary process. Under the title "La Esencia de Ariadna" (The Essence of Ariadne), Vicente Verdú highlighted in the exhibition catalogue the profound impact that encountering the sculpture of the mythological goddess (Sleeping Ariadne) from the Prado Museum had on Iluminada’s artistic trajectory. She painted that sculpture in the mid-80s alongside impressive still lifes of geometric objects. In his text, Verdú accurately reasoned the logic and evolutionary coherence of the Elche-born painter's transition from figuration to abstraction.
I completely agree with Verdú’s assessment. The pictorial analysis of Iluminada García-Torres is built upon the classic constant of representing essences and their paradoxical application to transitory concepts such as time and light.
Light. I remember the vibrant palette used in the works from last year’s exhibition. At its core, the minimalist aspect of her series "Continuous Spatial Tracing"—which reached its climax around 1993 with impeccable geometries close to the emotional purism of Mitsuo Miura—was still lingering in that work. Some of those paintings, which were truly excellent, hid something beyond words—something not as easily defined as the formal conventions and pacts we constantly make.
In ILUMINADA GARCÍA TORRES's current exhibition, these chromatic vibrations have been eliminated. In fact, she takes a risk by stripping away much of her color palette, sticking only to a few primaries she previously used during her time in London. Now, she incorporates black. The question of light is partially diluted to focus on composition and, fundamentally, the discourse of the line. She is gradually refining her work, removing everything she already knows—to avoid creative tics—or elements she considers anecdotal.
At first glance, this painting could be linked to Minimalism or even certain aspects of Eusebio Sempere's work; however, a more detailed reading points in a different direction. It establishes a subtle formal relationship between those 1960s and 70s trends and the Abstract Expressionism of Rothko.
They are lines drawn obsessively, analyzing the rhythms that emerge from the path of their trajectory within the proportional relationships established with the space contained in the modules. Modules which, according to ILUMINADA GARCÍA-TORRES, hide the laws of harmony beneath their cloak. It could be a rational, meditated composition, and in principle, it is. However, a physical closeness to each stroke reveals that they do not follow a unifying model. On the contrary, they bring an impossibility to the fore: achieving the absolute difference of every single line from all others in the painting. From the totality of lines in the paintings that make up the series. From all the series of stripes begun in the early 90s. From all the painted lines in the world.
The hand and the moment of its production are evidenced, albeit quite subtly; a time of painting that intends to drag the time of perception along with it. At its core, it is a far from trivial matter: the transmission of emotions. And where is the emotion in Rothko? I find that, beyond the empathy the American painter creates from several meters away, it lies in what is hidden, in the vibration of the interstices, in a centimeter of cobalt blue beneath meters of oranges and yellows. In that tiny point. And everything else is placed at its service.
Within the neatly arranged modules of Iluminada García-Torres’s paintings, one glimpses varying degrees of emotion, tension, relaxation, restraint, passion, coldness, agitation, weakening, inhibition, shock, detachment, vibration, enthusiasm, tepidity, exhaustion... of the moment of painting itself. Lichtenstein already proposed this, albeit ironically, when he designed his large-format brushstroke with Ben-Day dots. And it is the praise of that brushstroke, though silent, upon which ILUMINADA GARCIA- TORRES disturbingly insists. At times grandiloquently, at others like a mantra. Timidly. With the rhetoric of repetition. Less spectacular, yet also more surprising.
In her latest work, begun less than a year ago in a ceramics workshop organized by the Fundación Capa, Iluminada García-Torres speaks in three dimensions. These are initial investigations into the experience of boundaries that she had already touched upon in sculpture. What happens at the boundaries? What happens in the shift from one form to another? From a wave to an angle, for example. These are never obvious questions; they contain the elemental, the fundamental aspects of geometric expression.
Numbers go on to infinity. However, if one wishes to glimpse anything at all, it is necessary to analyze to the point of exhaustion the infinite relationships between 1, 2, and 3.
Catalogue exhibition by ILUMINADA GARCÍA-TORRES Casa Cultura de El CAMPELLO (Alicante), May 12 – June 20, 2001
2001 Catálogo Texto de Isabel Tejeda. arte geométrico pintura y escultura cerámica by ILUMINADA GARCIA-TORRES exposición C. Cultura EL CAMPELLO ALICANTE 2001%20Texto%20cat%C3%A1logo%20de%20Isabel%20Tejeda,%20exposici%C3%B3n%20de%20arte%20geom%C3%A9trico,%20Trazado%20Espacial%20Continuo-%20Hilo%20de%20Ariadna%20Pintura%20y%20COMBINABLES%20ESCULTURA%20CER%C3%81MICA%20y%20texto%20by%20ILUMINADA%20GT.jpg)
Texto Catálogo de Isabel Tejeda Exposición de arte geométrico "Trazado Espacial Continuo- Hilo de Ariadna" Pintura y "COMBINABLES- palabras geométricas" Escultura CERÁMICA y texto by ILUMINADA GARCÍA TORRES (1949 Elche-Elx, Alicante, Spain), en la CASA de CULTURA de EL CAMPELLO, Alicante, del 15 de Mayo a 20 de Junio de 2001.
.%20Cat%C3%A1logo%20y%20exposici%C3%B3n%20ARTE%20GEOM%C3%89TRICO,%20'TRAZADO%20ESPACIAL%20CONTINUO-%20HILO%20DE%20ARIADNA%20by%20ILUMINADA%20GARCIA-TORRES%20(1949%20Elche-Elx).jpg)
Iluminada García-Torres ["trazado espacial continuo hilo de ariadna", pintura 2001, "Combinables-palabrasgeométricas", cerámica 2001 : Casa de Cultura El Campello, Sala d'Exposicions, 12 de maig a 20 de juny, 2001]
Between the One, the Two, and the Three
Catalogue text by Isabel Tejeda May 2001
2001 Exhibition, "Continuous Spatial Tracing-Ariadne's Thread," painting 2001, "COMBINABLE Geometric Words," ceramics 2001 by ILUMINADA GARCÍA-TORRES. Catalogue and exhibition at the House of Culture in El CAMPELLO (Alicante), May 12–June 20, 2001.
Years ago, ILUMINADA GARCÍA-TORRES (Elche 1949, Alicante) evolved from figurative painting to abstraction. Her earlier work drew inspiration from the silence of Morandi and the obsession with capturing essence characteristic of Antonio López. At just 16, she was López's student at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, and she would paint with him again twenty years later in a workshop he led at the Círculo de Bellas Artes.
Last year, at the Institut Municipal de Cultura in Elche, ILUMINADA GARCIA-TORRES presented a magnificent exhibition curated by Isabel Chinchilla, who perfectly understood the painter's evolutionary process. Under the title "La Esencia de Ariadna" (The Essence of Ariadne), Vicente Verdú highlighted in the exhibition catalogue the profound impact that encountering the sculpture of the mythological goddess (Sleeping Ariadne) from the Prado Museum had on Iluminada’s artistic trajectory. She painted that sculpture in the mid-80s alongside impressive still lifes of geometric objects. In his text, Verdú accurately reasoned the logic and evolutionary coherence of the Elche-born painter's transition from figuration to abstraction.
I completely agree with Verdú’s assessment. The pictorial analysis of Iluminada García-Torres is built upon the classic constant of representing essences and their paradoxical application to transitory concepts such as time and light.
Light. I remember the vibrant palette used in the works from last year’s exhibition. At its core, the minimalist aspect of her series "Continuous Spatial Tracing"—which reached its climax around 1993 with impeccable geometries close to the emotional purism of Mitsuo Miura—was still lingering in that work. Some of those paintings, which were truly excellent, hid something beyond words—something not as easily defined as the formal conventions and pacts we constantly make.
In ILUMINADA GARCÍA TORRES's current exhibition, these chromatic vibrations have been eliminated. In fact, she takes a risk by stripping away much of her color palette, sticking only to a few primaries she previously used during her time in London. Now, she incorporates black. The question of light is partially diluted to focus on composition and, fundamentally, the discourse of the line. She is gradually refining her work, removing everything she already knows—to avoid creative tics—or elements she considers anecdotal.
At first glance, this painting could be linked to Minimalism or even certain aspects of Eusebio Sempere's work; however, a more detailed reading points in a different direction. It establishes a subtle formal relationship between those 1960s and 70s trends and the Abstract Expressionism of Rothko.
They are lines drawn obsessively, analyzing the rhythms that emerge from the path of their trajectory within the proportional relationships established with the space contained in the modules. Modules which, according to ILUMINADA GARCÍA-TORRES, hide the laws of harmony beneath their cloak. It could be a rational, meditated composition, and in principle, it is. However, a physical closeness to each stroke reveals that they do not follow a unifying model. On the contrary, they bring an impossibility to the fore: achieving the absolute difference of every single line from all others in the painting. From the totality of lines in the paintings that make up the series. From all the series of stripes begun in the early 90s. From all the painted lines in the world.
The hand and the moment of its production are evidenced, albeit quite subtly; a time of painting that intends to drag the time of perception along with it. At its core, it is a far from trivial matter: the transmission of emotions. And where is the emotion in Rothko? I find that, beyond the empathy the American painter creates from several meters away, it lies in what is hidden, in the vibration of the interstices, in a centimeter of cobalt blue beneath meters of oranges and yellows. In that tiny point. And everything else is placed at its service.
Within the neatly arranged modules of Iluminada García-Torres’s paintings, one glimpses varying degrees of emotion, tension, relaxation, restraint, passion, coldness, agitation, weakening, inhibition, shock, detachment, vibration, enthusiasm, tepidity, exhaustion... of the moment of painting itself. Lichtenstein already proposed this, albeit ironically, when he designed his large-format brushstroke with Ben-Day dots. And it is the praise of that brushstroke, though silent, upon which ILUMINADA GARCIA- TORRES disturbingly insists. At times grandiloquently, at others like a mantra. Timidly. With the rhetoric of repetition. Less spectacular, yet also more surprising.
In her latest work, begun less than a year ago in a ceramics workshop organized by the Fundación Capa, Iluminada García-Torres speaks in three dimensions. These are initial investigations into the experience of boundaries that she had already touched upon in sculpture. What happens at the boundaries? What happens in the shift from one form to another? From a wave to an angle, for example. These are never obvious questions; they contain the elemental, the fundamental aspects of geometric expression.
Numbers go on to infinity. However, if one wishes to glimpse anything at all, it is necessary to analyze to the point of exhaustion the infinite relationships between 1, 2, and 3.
Catalogue exhibition by ILUMINADA GARCÍA-TORRES Casa Cultura de El CAMPELLO (Alicante), May 12 – June 20, 2001
%20Texto%20cat%C3%A1logo%20de%20Isabel%20Tejeda,%20exposici%C3%B3n%20de%20arte%20geom%C3%A9trico,%20Trazado%20Espacial%20Continuo-%20Hilo%20de%20Ariadna%20Pintura%20y%20COMBINABLES%20ESCULTURA%20CER%C3%81MICA%20y%20texto%20by%20ILUMINADA%20GT.jpg)
.%20Cat%C3%A1logo%20y%20exposici%C3%B3n%20ARTE%20GEOM%C3%89TRICO,%20'TRAZADO%20ESPACIAL%20CONTINUO-%20HILO%20DE%20ARIADNA%20by%20ILUMINADA%20GARCIA-TORRES%20(1949%20Elche-Elx).jpg)
Iluminada García-Torres ["trazado espacial continuo hilo de ariadna", pintura 2001, "Combinables-palabrasgeométricas", cerámica 2001 : Casa de Cultura El Campello, Sala d'Exposicions, 12 de maig a 20 de juny, 2001]
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drawings-line.blogspot.com 1994-7
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numerical-design.blogspot.com 2002
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texto de Mario Jiménez Migallón en el Diario INFORMACIÓN, 7.Jun.2001.%20CasaCultura%20de%20El%20Campello,%20Alicante.jpg)
entrevista en LA PRENSA Magazine de Natalia Molinos Navarro, 9.Jun.2001
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among-lines.blogspot.com 2009
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2002·LORÉAL Arte Contemporáneo· Jurado XVIII Edición, exposición CentroCulturalCondeDuque. MADRID
https://ILUMINADA-GARCIA-TORRES-concursos-Premio-de-Pintura-L'OREAL-XVII-XVIII-centro-cultural-CONDE-DUQUE-MADRID-2001-2002
exposición 2002, Lonja del Pescado de Alicante. C/Paseo Almirante Julio Guillén Tato s/n. 03001 Alicante
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exposición 2002, Lonja del Pescado de Alicante. C/Paseo Almirante Julio Guillén Tato s/n. 03001 Alicante
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exposición 2002, Lonja del Pescado de Alicante. C/Paseo Almirante Julio Guillén Tato s/n. 03001 Alicante
https://geometria/el-Hilo-de-
2003·Texto Juan Angel Blasco Carrascosa, Catedrático de Historia del Arte, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, LA ESCULTURA VALENCIANA DEL SIGLO XX / COMBINABLES A´ 1991 by ILUMINADA GARCIA-TORRES, Editorial Federico Domenech 2003 
2003·Escultura Valenciana del Siglo XX, textos Juan Angel Blasco Carrascosa/escultura COMBINABLES A by ILUMINADA GARCIA-TORRES(3).jpg)
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exposición 2002, Lonja del Pescado de Alicante. C/Paseo Almirante Julio Guillén Tato s/n. 03001 Alicante
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numerical-design.blogspot.com 2002
Iluminada García-Torres
Iluminada García-Torres
