Torsten Andersson was one of Sweden's most enigmatic artists, celebrated by critics and colleagues, an inspiration to many, but also known for destroying much of what he created. His paintings may sometimes appear hasty, but for each painting, he often made hundreds of sketches and trial paintings. Then he would burn everything that didn't meet his standards. His self-criticism led him to "obliterate" paintings that had been completed for many years and exhibited in several museums and art galleries. Lars Nittve, as the director of the Moderna Museet, wrote the following: "Out of a hundred working drawings, ninety are destroyed. The surviving ten drawings give rise to a hundred new ones, of which ninety are destroyed. Twenty drawings remain. Sixteen of these are destroyed. Four remain. They continue in the working process, become paintings, with no guarantee of survival."

Torsten Andersson studied at Otte Sköld's painting school in 1945, at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1947, and from 1946 to 1950 at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, where he was appointed a professor at an exceptionally young age in 1960. He was twice awarded the Carnegie Art Award: the first prize of one million Swedish kronor in 2008 and the third prize in 1998. He was also awarded the 1997 Schock Prize in Art.

In his early paintings, he depicted portraits of abstract objects inspired by nature, seeking to rediscover the possibilities of painting after modernism, in a new era. Slowly but surely, he began to develop his own language and freed himself from predecessors and the prevailing tradition. After many years of silence, in the 1980s, he exhibited a series of paintings of abstract sculptures with a poetic origin. Over time, the motifs became concrete sculptures, and in the early 2000s, his canvases were filled with soft textile forms and symbols. His language evolved and solidified.

In the 1990s, he donated around twenty large paintings to the Malmö Art Museum, which boasts the most significant collection of Torsten Andersson's art. He is also represented in several important private collections, as well as at the Moderna Museet and the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm and the Helsingborg Museum.