Rowing with Sharks Print

Toro was born in Santiago, Chile in 1943. A self-taught painter, at the age of 19 he won a Chilean national competition for watercolor and his art career took off. His first solo exhibition was in 1963 at Taller 13 in Santiago. At the age of twenty-two, he left Chile on an ocean voyage to Europe, arriving in Barcelona, Spain in the summer of 1966. He traveled and worked in Spain, France Germany and Italy, finally settling in Sweden where he found his voice as an abstract expressionist and flourished. It was in Sweden where he began to paint his trademark large-scale canvases. During his five decades as a professional artist, Toro has lived and shown his work in many places in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas. After moving to the United States in 1978, he became a fixture on the San Francisco Bay Area art scene. At age 70, he now divides his time between Oakland, California and Concón, Chile and continues to paint prolifically.