Francesc Torres (Barcelona, 1948) worked as an apprentice in his father’s printing workshop and to trained as a graphic artist. In 1967 he moved to Paris to continue his art studies at the École des Beaux Arts and became an assistant to the artist Piotr Kowalski. During this time he began producing work with a non-functional, industrial appearance and followed the strategies of Minimalism in its formal and material basis. Yet, the tumultuous events of May 1968 redirected his activities and he worked on posters for the May ’68 movement of workers and students until it collapsed under the force of de Gaulle’s conservative government. He moved back to Spain to do his military service, something, which as he stated, provided him ‘with a first-hand insight into military behaviour as well as a great deal of information for my subsequent work’. Shortly after he moved to Chicago and then to New York, where he has lived since 1974. He has had numerous solo exhibitions in institutions such as the International Center of Photography (New York), the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), the Institut Valencia d’Art Modern (Valencia), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, List Visual Arts Center (Cambridge, USA), Sala Rekalde (Bilbao), Arizona State University Art Museum (Tempe, Arizona), Queens Museum of Art (New York) and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art (Ithaca, New York).

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