Torsten Renqvist was active as a visual artist, sculptor and writer. He studied at Otte Skölds painting school, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen from 1946 to 1948 and for Sven X:et Ericson at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1948 to 2050, followed study trips to the Netherlands, Germany, Paris and London, where he stayed in 1951–1952 as the British Council Scholarship. Renqvist was also a teacher at Valand in Gothenburg 1955-1958.

Primarily, Torsten Renqvist is known as neo-expressionist painter and wayward sculptor, often in wood, bronze or in a mixture of different materials, depicting people and animals with a personal expression. His painting shows his abstract and expressionist works. Most sought after are the larger paintings with strong colors, which the auction's unusually large painting that was exhibited in the autumn of 2024 at the retrospective anniversary exhibition “Fragments i ground and time” in honor of the 100th anniversary of Torsten Renqvist.

Renqvist’s creation has since its debut been perceived as a unique and vital alternative to contemporary currents in Swedish art, despite the fact that his paintings, graphics and sculpture have long been central to Swedish art. At the 1964 Biennale in Venice, he was awarded a prize for his graphics. “Torsten Renqvist belonged to last century’s really great Swedish artists” wrote the famous museumman Ulf Linde.

In the City of Stockholm’s art collection, Torsten Renqvist is represented with 127 works in different techniques. Some of them were lent to the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts' retrospective. He is also represented in the collections at, among others, the Modern Museum of Stockholm, Gothenburg Art Museum, Kalmar Museum, Malmö Museum, Norrköping Art Museum, Örebro County Council, National Museum in Stockholm and the State Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen.