It was not easy for Antonio López Torres to be a painter at a time and in a place, the dawn of the 20th century in La Mancha, which was following harder and rougher paths than the ideals of being an artist. But a talent was already emerging that, fortunately, found protectors along the way: a school teacher, Miguel Pareja, and an art teacher, Ángel Andrade who convinced his father for the promising painter to study Fine Arts in Ciudad Real after to be impressed with the works that he had presented to a National Painting Exhibition held in Tomelloso. Madrid would be his next formative link and there he was able to meet the great masters of the Prado Museum.

López Torres did not adapt to life in Madrid and when he finished his studies he returned to Tomelloso. He found the patronage of Francisco Martínez Ramírez "El Obrero" and the tranquility in Mirasol to cultivate still life, landscape and portraiture. He had already discovered the fundamental values ​​on which he based painting: shape, color, light, space and temperature. The war marks a traumatic parenthesis in the painter's career. Fortunately, he was saved from going to the front by being assigned to the Almadén Engineers Command, where his brother Julián was also.

The war ends and it is precisely at this moment that one of the less analyzed aspects of the work of this great genius appears: López Torres filled his paintings with tenderness painting children. “These were treated as components of the landscape; as a reality that forms, in effect, an integral part of the countryside”, says Jorge J. Pérez Parada in a detailed study on the painter from Tomello. “López Torres prefers the representation of children, for being, within the human, what is closest to nature. The artist, with admirable retention, absorbs in his mind the postures of the children and transfers them to the pictorial support”, continues Pérez Parada.

He praises his compositions in a squat pyramid that focuses and organizes the viewer's attention; the critic refers to the painting “Children in an era”, although the work that best reflects the special predilection that the artist feels for children is Children playing balls.

Juan Manuel Bonet, author of another rigorous study on the painter's work, will also highlight this aspect. “Antonio López Torres has known how to express in his landscapes the poetry of the wide plain of La Mancha, its skies, its vineyards and its threshing floors, its distances, its elemental constructions, the transparency and golden light of its afternoons, the animals and human beings –with preference for the youngest and most humble- who work there”.

On the occasion of an exhibition in the Goya room of the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Enrique Lafuente Ferrari pointed out in the catalogue. "I have seen him stammer with emotion, his eyes shining as a man who lives inwardly, trying to express the poetry that springs from the most humble and everyday things: a well in the sun on the plain, some children playing in a threshing floor..."Francisco Threshold in the prologue of the book "Se llama Tomelloso" also stops at the love that the artist feels for nature and the little ones. “He seems to me to be a painter, a wise man alone, a man who has gone through all the painting of our time, or our time has gone through his painting, but his enormous sensitivity wisely leads him towards his personal way of understanding a donkey, some children, an era, a landscape or a countryman”.

The children of López Torres were those of the post-war period, those who also sought the small happiness and pleasures that the hard life of that time could offer. Little beings who gazed enthralled at the horizons behind the hill, the clouds and the skies infinities; children who played and dreamed, who finished their school days early, children with not always white bread, some well dressed, the majority poorly dressed, children who were also impressed by the trains that the great Eladio Cabañero saw go by….”I saw the train very long on the plain, whistling, with its smoke and its firecrackers…”

They made groups in the threshing floor, hiding among the recently cut pile, imagining pirate battles over the gravel, watching how in the distance the peasants drew the right furrow in the earth. Children who waited for different things to happen that would alter the tedium of the days, who lifted stones to see the tiny fauna of the earth, who savored the fresh water from the cistern or the freshly cut watermelon. López Torres painted them in the summer haze, in the unpleasant autumn and harsh winter, in the beautiful spring. He painted them with infinite tenderness as if demonstrating the innocence and integrity with which childhood adapts to the time it has to live. And to the children of López Torres Eladio sang again:

Children of Tomelloso

in its streets so long

playing under a sky

high blue and low lime,

intermediate clouds

and furrows and white grapes

Alone, free

in the middle of the unfortunate war

That predilection for the little ones was exercised by other great masters of painting; Murillo painted the poor street children; Rafael's were angels from heaven, Sorolla immortalized them enjoying themselves in the sea; Rembrandt highlighted the purity of childhood in his formidable chiaroscuros; Goya painted them in endearing costumbrista passages; Picasso captured the sadness of circus children with incomparable mastery... Velázquez, Van Gogh, Renoir could not resist those looks that always tell the truth, unable to hide joy and sadness and that express the essence of things. He painted them too his nephew, Antonio López García.

Antonio López Torres was an inveterate lover of nature, life in the countryside, birds and, as we have been saying, children.

Letting your imagination run wild, these could be the stories of the boys in five of his paintings.

Boy under a tartana

Clara Mari mows with energy and determination, smack, smack, smack, with one eye on her work and the other on her little one, whom she has left in the shade of the tartan to protect him from the sun. The thread is long, she tightens the heat, but Matilde smiles when she approaches her little one. Be careful my son, don't move from there. There quiet in the gloom. Chas, whoosh, whoosh, ufff how hot! Play with your pictures, son, I'll be back now. He drinks water eagerly, but he has to get away from the child again and little by little he is shortening the length of the thread. Whoop, whoop, whoop. The husband barely speaks, he just nods with some gesture or monosyllable. When the summer is over we will have to take him to Don Abraham's school to teach him numbers and letters. Oh my god, it's hot! He sighs as he wipes the sweat from his forehead and looks at a horizon diffused by the haze.

What will our little Gabriel be when he grows up? Clara drops the question and her husband pauses before answering: whatever has to be will be. I would like to see him in the office of a winery, like the major of the Fili who is in the Espinosas or in the Post Office or in the Town Hall. Don't go through hardships like us working in the field. Whoop, whoop, whoop. The straw crackles when it is cut, it smells of heap and dry earth. The two look at the sun that is going down. Another thread back and off we go. And Clara smiles because she will reach the tartana and she will devour Gabriel with kisses, she will caress him a thousand times and snuggle him in her lap while Saleroso pulls the cart and little by little they will reach the town. My precious! Morning Star! Handsome! Gabriel burst out laughing. With the rattling of the Cart and the rhythmic steps of Saleroso, he will end up falling asleep.

Children in the stubble

“What did your grandmother give you for a snack today? Carmencita, the eldest, and Isa, the youngest, walk through the stubble field with the basket, while Manolín sighs to see its contents . He will have to make a pity face so that they give him a little mustillo like last time. Pleasant and cruel bite at the same time, because it melted in his mouth almost without tasting it. Juan knows about his friend's hardships, that his father was taken away, that he lives alone with his mother, that they make a living with what she earns serving, that they are trying to take him to a farmhouse, that he will soon stop going to the teacher's house. He always wears the same clothes inherited from older brothers; threadbare, patched and worn from so many washings; laugh whenever you can, but with that undercurrent of sorrow behind difficult lives.

Elvira and María Luisa approach. This basket swings, they run around, talk non-stop, shout, laugh... Let's go have a snack Juan! Grandma has prepared some boiled eggs, several loaves of bread, some mustillo and some white beans. Manolín's eyes go to the food that the three brothers begin to devour. Juan notices his friend's sensations. Go try some bread, Manolín. Well, if I'm not very hungry... well if it's worth a little. Sometimes the shame was worse than the hunger itself.

The girls continue talking, they eat and watch in silence while the sun of the splendid spring afternoon begins to hide.

Plain with children

By the way, who is that man painting right in front of us? He always comes at the same time and has his eyes fixed on us. He is a village painter. They say it's very good. I would like to paint like him. I would paint my grandparents' house, my dog ​​and my cat, my street, I would also paint you. Do you want us to come and see what he is painting? They run towards the artist. At first he pretends not to see them and continues to refine the colors with his brushes. From the palette to the painting and from the painting to the palette, the artist mechanically executes the movements. There is a long silence, until one of the boys asks. Are those children that you paint us? The artist narrows his eyes, looks at them and smiles a little. It's you and many others who come here, he says. Look, that in the red jacket is me, the one I brought the other day! And this one looks just like me! No, no, that's your cousin Rafael, look at his clothes and the shape of his hair... The ones in the background look like the Bonero gang, look closely and you'll see that yes, this one who has started painting looks like Fede. Since when do you paint? Since I can remember, I was smaller than you are now. And it is difficult? He closes his eyes again and the painter shows a smile again. What is done with interest and emotion ends up being easy.

He continues painting until evening falls and the painter patiently collects his belongings. With his hand on his forehead, he looks at the light of the sun that is hiding and the merriment of the little ones in their games and conversations. He takes the road and goes to the town. Tomorrow, at the same time as always, he will return to the same place that he leaves marked with a few stones.

Boy drinking water from a well

Little Javier enjoys the days his grandfather takes him to the fields. The ritual is repeated every morning when he wakes him up. Come on Javier, let's go! The illusion of a field day can with the best of sleep. He goes after his grandfather who goes to the corral with walls that are increasingly whiter by dawn. With slow movements, he feeds and waters the mule, prepares the cart, raises the tray with the lunch, the sack with the tools and finally harnesses the animal. Javier opens the gate and the car leaves to move along the long deserted street. The rattle of the cart resounds and the gallop of the animal just as the first rays of sun color the roofs. Ale, brother Gregorio! You have good company today with your little grandson! What a good job! Be careful!...the neighbors with whom he comes across tell him.

In a short time they reach the last houses of the town and head down the deep path to reach the vineyard. The grandfather sings a seguidilla, while Javier breathes in the fresh aroma of the morning landscape. They arrive, unload and the grandfather does not take long to get down to business. He piles up the heap and forms that mountain of gold that Javier enjoys so much. He climbs on and off it like a rock climber, falls over and over again, laughing, not caring about the bits of straw that stick to his body. The heap half finished, the grandfather moves into the vineyard and pulls up weeds, caresses the young shoots that the vine offers, sprinkles a handful of earth that he sees as too dry, walks through threads and counter-threads and from time to time directs his gaze to the chores of his grandson on the heights of his imaginary straw castle. The boy almost always stays next to the well that fascinates him, he leans out, he likes to see himself reflected, he lowers the bucket and loads that water that he drinks with joy and complacency. It seems to him much richer than the one he takes at home. Grandfather also drinks the water that the old cistern preserves so well. The midday sun hits hard and, after a short nap, it won't take long for them to load the car and head home.

Kids playing ball

Now it's my turn. Leandro impatiently awaits his turn, while little Justo watches attentively the movements of the two contenders. They prepare the battlefield next to the covers of the Madrigals. With great care they have dug a hole in the ground and surround it with a pile of sand so that the ball will fit better. The ball that Leandro throws reaches the precious hole and in this way can be thrown at the enemy balls. He must always respect the distances: finger, fourth, foot, ball and carom so that fights do not start, disputes for "having put a sleeve" or extend the hand of the fourth regulation more. It is already known: each ball "killed" must pay its penalty, be it shell, clay, glass or iron.

Ángel watches helplessly at Leandro's maneuver, who with skill and dexterity, takes over the game. He always beats me, he laments. Almost without realizing it, lunchtime comes upon them and then they will have to go back to school. They rush to pick up the cataparcios that they had left lying on the ground and run quickly towards their houses. Just the little one stays a little behind. He tries to reach them while he dreams of soon having that iron ball that his uncle promised him. He thinks that when he has that precious jewel in his possession, there will be no one who can beat him, not even Leandro.