Sonia Torres (Born 1935) Colombian/American, Asian-Inspired Oil on Canvas. Depicts a chickadee eating red berries in the stark and beautiful Chinese bird-and-flower painting style (huaniaohua). Signed bottom right. Label on back of frame gives a brief biography of the artist, including dating the piece based on the artist's given age (circa 1975). 

Condition: Commensurate with age. 

Overall Size: 19 x 31 in. 

Sight Size: 11 1/2 x 21 1/2 in. 

Sonia Gil Torres was born in Cali, Colombia in 1935. She studied art and ballet at the University Del Valle, finishing her studies in 1956. After completing school, Torres taught classical dance until an injury brought her career as a dancer to an abrupt end. Torres then returned to painting, traveling to New York City in 1966 to get a look at the American art scene first hand. Over the next decade her artistic style matured and progressed as she established herself in the modernist scene. In the early 1970s she began avidly collecting Japanese dolls and art, and since then her work has been most heavily influenced by Asian themes and designs. In 1975 Torres returned to Colombia to visit her family, and wound up remaining there for three years, inspired by the Amazon region and its animal life, before returning to the United States for good. Her art has been featured in solo exhibitions in Cali and Bogota, and showcased in galleries in the United States and abroad, with permanent displays at the Hibel Museum in Florida and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in Illinois, the two states she now divides all her time between.

Commensurate with age.