Throughout his career John Torreano has maintained a remarkably independent stance in the art world. Although his work has commented on other stylistic tendencies, he has successfully managed to circumvent the fleeting trends and "isms" of recent decades, focusing instead on his own uncompromisingly unique vision.

For several decades he has challenged such modernist’s dogma as essentialism or the idea of art as “container” with a concept of meaning determined by a multiplicity of points of view or as he would say "...There are many stars, there are many gods". In his effort to expand these boundaries he has enlisted a wide variety of unconventional materials and means, i.e., acrylic gems, wood spheres, Krylon paint, polyhedrals, snub nose moldings etc., all in an effort to reconstruct a formalist vocabulary. Armed with these tools, a great, wit, and a physical sensitivity to color and material, his work confronts the viewer with many of the oxymoronic binaries of contemporary art and culture.

Internationally known, his achievements have been recognized with many grants including the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts. Torreano’s work is included in the collections of: The Corcoran Gallery of Art, DC; Chase Manhattan Bank, NY; Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN; The Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI; The Grand Rapids Art Museum, MI; La Foret Museum, Japan; Foundation Villa Rufolo, Italy; Albright Knox Gallery, NY; Dayton Art Institute, OH; Eli Broad Foundation, CA; Norton Gallery of Art, FL; Los Angeles County Museum, CA; Honolulu Museum of Contemporary Art, HI; Denver Art Museum, CO; Fredrick Weisman Collection, CA; Contemporary Arts Museum, TX; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.