Considered the oldest painter in the world, the Vigo artist Luis Torras Martínez, who was born in 1912the same year in which the ‘Titanic’ sankhas 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 a.m. to stand in front of an easel without needing to find any special motivation. to 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 claimed that “you always want to improve” and concluded that painting was his “life”.

The main themes of Torras’ painting have been fstatic human figures, landscapes, still lifes and still lifesand a good part of his work is in the House of Arts of Vigowhere the Torras Collection is located, but there is also his work in the Reina Sofia Museum in Madridin 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 like Piero della Francesca, of the one who admired the luminosity he achieved in his frescoes, or of 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 was going to be remembered: “When I die, it’s over with messing around, right? I have no desire? A dead donkey, barley to the tail,” he said.