Antonio López Torres was not easy.But there was already a talent that, fortunately, found protectors along the way: a school teacher, Miguel Pareja, and an art teacher, Ángel Andrade who convinced his father so that the promising painter studied fine arts in Ciudad Real afterbe impressed with the works that had presented a national exhibition of painting held in Tomelloso.Madrid would be his next training link and there he could meet the great masters of the Prado Museum.

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

The contest ends and it is just at this time when one of the less -wrecking aspects appears than others of the work of this great genius: López Torres filled the paintandoniños paintings of tender.“These were treated as landscape components;as a reality that forms, in effect, an integral part of the field, ”says Jorge J.Pérez stops in a thorough study of the tomellosero painter.“López Torres prefers the representation of children, because it is, within the human, the closest is of nature.The artist, with admirable retentive, absorbs in his mind the positions of the Chiquillos and transfer them to the pictorial support, ”Pérez Paraz continues.

He praises his compositions in an achaparrada pyramid that focuses and organizes the viewer's attention;The critic to the “Children in an Era” picture refers, although the work that best reflects the special predilection that the artist feels for the little ones 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 managed to express in his landscapes the poetry of the wide Manchega plain, his heavens, his vine–With preference for the youngest and most humble- who work in it ”.

On the occasion of an exhibition in the Goya Room of the Circle of Fine Arts of Madrid, Enrique Lafuente Ferrari pointed out in the catalog."I have seen him babble, brilliant his eyes of a man who lives inwards, trying to express the poetry that springs from the most humble and everyday things: a well in the sun on the plain, some little girls playing in an era ..." Francisco FranciscoThreshold in the prologue of the book "His name Tomelloso" also stops in the love that the artist feels for nature and the little ones.“It seems to me a painter, a sage alone, a man who has passed through all the painting of our time, or our time has gone through his painting, but that his enormous sensitivity takes him wisely to his personal way of understanding a donkey, someChildren, an era, a landscape or a countryman ".

López Torres' children were the postwar.Little beings that the horizons that were behind the hill, the clouds and the infinite skies were looked in ram;Children complained and dreamed, that their school days soon ended, children of bread not always white, well dressed in some, badly dressed the most, children who also impressed the trains that saw the great eladio cabañero saw ...."I saw the train very long on the plain, whistling, with its smoke and its bolliscas ..."

They made corrillos in the era, hiding between the freshly cut parva, imagining battles of pirates by the stony, seeing how far the peasants drew the right groove on earth.Children who expected different things to alter the tedium of the days, who lifted stones to see the tiny fauna of the earth, which savored the fresh water of the cistern or the fresh watermelon.López Torres painted them in the calima of summer, in the disappeared autumn and crude winter, in the beautiful spring.He painted them with an infinite tenderness as demonstrating innocence and fortitude that child.And the children of López Torres again Cantareladio:

Children of Tomelloso

In its long streets

Playing under a sky

of high blue and low,

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cloud intermediates

and grooves and white grapes

Alone, in freedom

In full infamous war

This predilection for the little ones was exercised by other great masters of painting;Murillo painted the poor street children;Rafael's were angels of heaven, Sorolla immortalized them enjoying at sea;Rembrandt highlighted the purity of childhood in its clear-dark formidable;Goya painted them in endearing costumbristas passages;Picasso captured with unique mastery the sadness of the children of the circuses ... Velázquez, Van Gogh, Renoir could not resist those looks that always tell the truth, unable to hide the joy and sadness and that express the essence of things.They were also painted by his nephew, Antonio López García.

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

Letting the imagination fly, they could be the stories of the boys of five of their paintings.

Child under a tartana

Clara Mari mow with energy and determination, chas, zas, chas, with one eye on the work and the other in her little one, which she has left in the shadow of the tartana to protect it from the sun.The thread is long, press the heat, but Matilde smiles when he approaches his little.Be careful my son, don't move from there.There still in the gloomy.Chas, zas, chas, ufff what heat!Play with your prints, son, who now comes back.Drink water with desire, but you have to get away from the child and gradually shorten the thread length.CHAS, ZAS, CHAS.The husband barely speaks only nods with some gesture or monosyllable.When the summer will have to take it to the school of Don Abraham to teach him the numbers and the letters.Oh my god, it's hot!She sighs as the sweat dries from her forehead and looks at a diffuse horizon by calima.

What will our little Gabriel be when he is older? Clara drops the question and her husband leaves a break before answering: whatever it has to be will be.I would like to see it in the office of a winery, such as the major of the FILI in the spiny or in the post office or in the town hall.That does not pass hardships like us working in the field.CHAS, ZAS, CHAS.Crepita the straw when cut, smells to Parva and dry land.The two look at the sun going down.Another thread and we are going.And Clara smiles because she will arrive at the tartana and you will eat kisses to Gabriel, she will make a thousand carantoñas and curl it in her lap while saleros.Mine beautiful!Morning Star!Handsome!Gabriel escapes the laughter.With the tracheteo of the car and the salakeo's accompanied steps he will end up falling asleep.

Children in the stubble

“What will have thrown them with a snack today? Carmencita, the largest, and Isa the smallest walk through the trace with the basket, while Manolín sighs to see its content.You will have to put a shame for you to give you a little Mostillo like the last time.Pleasant and cruel bite at the same time, because he was undone in his mouth.Juan knows about the hardships of his friend, that his father was taken away, who lives alone with his mother, who live with what she wins serving, that they are behind taking him to a work house, who will soon stop goingTo the teacher's house.Always wears the same clothes inherited from older brothers;raid, picked up and past of so many washes;as long as it can, but with that background of grief behind the difficult lives.

Elvira and María Luisa approach.Balance is the basket, they run, talk non -stop, shout, rien ... let's snack Juan!Grandma has prepared some cooked eggs, several bread loafs, some mostillo and some albarillos.Manolin's eyes are heading to the foods that the three brothers begin to devour.Juan note your friend's sensations.Go a little bread, Manolin.Well, if I'm not too hungry ... well if it is worth a little.Sometimes shame was worse than hunger itself.

Girls keep talking, they eat and look silent while the sun of the splendid spring afternoon begins to hide.

Plain with children

By the way, who is that man painting just in front of us?.It always comes to the same time and has the look fixed on us.He is a town 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 to see what he is painting?They run in the direction of the artist.At first he does as if he did not see them and continue to refine the colors with their brushes.From the palette to the painting and the painting to the palette, the artist mechanically executes the movements.A long silence is made, until one of the boys asks.Those children that you paint us?The artist hinders his eyes, looks at them and smiles a little.You are you and many others who come here, he says.Look, that of the red jacket is me, the one who brought the other day!.And this looks like me!No, no, that's your cousin Rafael, look at clothes and hair shape ... Those in the background look like the bonero gang, fix yourself well and you will see how, this one that has begun to paint Fede.Since when do you look?Since I have reason, it was smaller than you are now.And it's difficult?Hinders his eyes again and the painter shows a smile again.What is done with interest and emotion ends up being easy.

Keep painting until the afternoon falls and the painter patiently picks up the Bártulos.With the hand on the forehead, look at the sunlight that is hidden and the excitement of the little ones in their games and conversations.Take the way and go to the people.Tomorrow, at the same time as always, he will return to the same place that leaves marked with a few stones.

Child drinking water in a well

Little JavierDisfruta on the days that his grandmother leads to the field.The ritual is repeated every morning when I wake up, Javier comes up, what are we going!The illusion of a field day can with the best of sleep.It goes behind the grandfather who goes to the increasingly white wall corral by dawn.With slow movements give feed and water to the mule, prepare the car, raise the bar with lunch, the sack with the tools and finally hook the animal.Javier opens the gate and the car goes out to advance along the long desert street.The car and gallop's swallowing of the animal resonates just when the first rays colored the roofs.Ale, Brother Gregorio! Good company you have today with the Nietetecillo!How good the task!Go with care!...The neighbors with whom he crosses.

In a short time they reach the last houses of the town and bring the deep road to reach the vineyard.The grandfather sings a string, while Javier breathes the fresh aroma of the morning landscape.They arrive, discharge and the grandfather does not take long to get in work.Stack the parva and form that mountain of gold in which Javier is so fun.It climbs and talls it as if it were a climber, falls again and again, laughing, regardless of straw brizas that stick to the body.Half man, the parva, the grandfather moves to the vineyard and weeds, caresses the young pampanas that offers the strain, sprinkles a handful of land that sees too dry, walks through threads and contrahilosy from time to time when he looks at the work of the work ofHis grandson at the heights of his imaginary straw castle.The boy is almost always next to the well that fascinates him, looks out, he likes to be reflected, low the cube and load that water that drinks with enjoyment and complacency.It seems much richer than the one taken at home.The grandfather also drinks elagua that the old cistern retains so well.The midday sun stuck strong and, after a small nap, will soon load the car and return home.

Children playing balls

Now it's my turn.Leandro expects his turn impatient, while the little one just observes the movements of the two contestants attentive.They prepare the battlefield next to the covers of the Madrigales.With great care they have excavated a hole on the ground and surround it with a lot of sandpara that the ball is better fitted.The ball that Lanza Leandro reaches the preciahueco and thus already can be on the enemy balls.You have to always respect the distances: finger, fourth, foot, ball and carambola for the quarrels, the disputes, the disputes to "have put manga" or extend the hand of the fourth regulatory.It is already known: each "killed" ball must pay its penalty, whether conchinas, mud, glass or iron.

Ángel looks helplessly by Leandro's maneuver, who with skill and skill, takes over the game.He always beats me, laments.Almost without realizing it, the time of the food is thrown and then they will have to return school.They rush to take the catapartments that had left lying on the ground and run to their homes.Just the little one stays a little behind.Try to reach them while dreaming about having that iron ball that promised his uncle who promised him soon.Think that when you have that precious jewel in your possession there will be no one to win, not even Leandro.