John Torreano is an American artist, best known for utilizing faceted gems in a variety of mediums and methods to create "movement-oriented perception" in his works. Throughout his career, Torreano has investigated the properties of real and fake gemstones in the differing contexts of lighting, placement, and materials. Artist Richard Artschwager described Torreano's works as, “ paintings that stand still and make you move “.

With the universe as his muse, New York and Sag Harbor-based artist John Torreano combines realism infused with abstraction to create works that conflate time and space. Often mapping out ideas on paper first and expanding in paintings, Torreano has been inspired by the myriad images recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope to create works that contrast the physical with the illusory.

John Torreano (b. 1941, Flint, Michigan) earned his BFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and his MFA from Ohio State University, where he studied perception as it relates to painting. Torreano has lived in New York City since 1968. He has worked in painting, sculpture, and printmaking. Torreano’s work has been exhibited internationally at museums and galleries, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council of the Arts. Torreano recently retired as Professor of Studio Art at New York University. He also taught at NYU Abu Dhabi as well as the school’s sites in Florence and Venice.