Teodoro Gomezdelatorre Ruiz, self-taught painter, and movie-maker, was born in Quito, Ecuador.
Currently residing in Florida, United States.
teodorogomezdelatorre@yahoo.com
Teodoro is born in the city of Quito, capital of Ecuador.
As a child, Teodoro painted everywhere, showing a natural ability that, while not precisely encouraged, was also not forbidden, and he became a self-taught painter through tenacity and perseverance.
He was raised in an art-friendly environment: his father was the director of the most important Theatre in Ecuador. Teodoro was a privileged spectator and the magical virus of the stage captured him.
At 21 he holds his first art show, with an original treatment of cubism and abstract painting. Then he moves to New York.
Back in Ecuador, he becomes involved in a Theatre company as director and producer. After that he flies to Spain. He gets in contact with a new artistic form, the “conjunction of all art forms”: Filmmaking. Back in Ecuador he explores the expressive possibilities of the Seventh Art. He produces and directs a series of short films, and works in 3 long films.
He continues to paint, including the portraits for the Hall Of Presidents of The Episcopal Ecuadorian Conference, of four Ex-Presidents for the Ministry of Foreign Relations, and three Presidents for the Hall Of Presidents of the Republic.
He moves on to explore the amazon jungle. He paints a long series with the tropical lust of the vegetation as protagonist, and with feminine figures full of erotic meaning in its midst, developing a style of “magical realism”.
After this, Teodoro's new aesthetic proposal is to tell his stories through eyeglasses, asking cosmic questions with infinite answers.
After more exhibitions, he holds an art show in Kuwait. After that, he presents his work in Brussels, in Belgium.
Teodoro continues to paint. His style evolves to a new chromatic, audacious, agressive proposal that represents worlds and environments with new sensations, using the spatula with semi-impressionistic touches that make Teodoro Gomez de la Torre a unique and permanent name in Ecuadorian art.
Now he resides in the United States.
"Ever since I was a child I started to draw, then I added color to my drawings, unconsciously trying to express what I saw, what I was feeling every day, registering then in my paintings the parts that wanted to get out of my head, or my soul. Thus I developed as my way of expression in art a style of surrealism mixed with realistic figures, or ghosts I carry inside.
There are many past painters who have influenced me, but I can't mention one in specific. I respect and admire them all, and all have left a little mark in my creative mind, to solve the problem of aesthetics, of space, of harmony and composition. I'm self-taught, maybe due to my restless character, which has taken me through other artistc paths like theater or cinema. All of this has made my art border on surrealism.
I think art is art, and that's all, in any of its manifestations, when one lives by and for the art. I don't really work according to a plan but instead according to my emotional motivations; I paint when I feel like doing it. Only creativity rules in my work.
For me, art is life itself. Even though it can have different functions, what's valid is the artistic language, art for art's sake. Everybody can try and define art yet nobody can define it. The only way we can express it is in our own ways, which for me, is with a brush on a piece of canvas."
