2023-08-07 03:13:24
The women’s summer dresses flutter white in the sea breeze. Tanned children play carefree and happy on the almost violet sandy beach of Malvarrosa. Fishermen pulling their small boats out of the sea with powerful oxen following work. The Mediterranean beaches of his Spanish hometown of Valencia were Joaquín Sorolla’s favorite setting. Some of his most famous pictures, such as “Walk on the Beach” or “The Return of the Fishermen”, were created here.
Sorolla enchanted all of Europe with his colourful, idyllic beach scenes. After his work was awarded the Grand Prize of Honor at the Paris Exposition of 1900, he became one of the most sought-following painters and portraitists in Europe, explains Pablo González Tornel, art historian and director of the Valencian Museum of Fine Arts. “It is this inimitable, soft and pure light and its play with the shadow that Sorolla knew how to paint like few painters”. It was not for nothing that Sorolla was called the “Painter of Light” or the “Painter of Beauty”, the expert recalled in an interview with APA.
After “Sorolla. Origins”, a special exhibition on the painter’s late work is now running in his Museum of Fine Arts until October 1st. From October in Valencia, the Bancaja Foundation invites you to “Sorolla and the Light” until the end of the year. But not only Sorolla’s home town of Valencia is offering special exhibitions regarding the “painter of light” this year. In 2023, all of Spain will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of his death with a series of jubilee exhibitions. Born in 1863, the painter died on August 10, 1923 at the age of only 59 in Cercedilla, a village on the outskirts of Madrid.
Special exhibitions have already been shown in the Prado and in the Royal Palace in Madrid. Sorolla’s House Museum in Madrid is showing “Sorolla in Front of the Sea with Manuel Vicent” until September 17th. “Journeys to Paint” is the name of an exhibition series that shows paintings in various Spanish cities in which Sorolla depicted the respective region or city.
Until October 15, the San Telmo Museum in San Sebastián is dedicated to Sorolla’s landscape paintings on the Basque coast. The famous garden paintings that Sorolla painted in the Andalusian capital will be on display in the Reales Alcázares of Seville until December. The Museo del Greco in Toledo is showing the depictions of the city until September. Further stops in the “Travelling to Paint” series can be seen in Valladolid, Mallorca and La Coruña in the second half of the year.
Sorolla is assigned to the Impressionists, although he always saw himself in the painting style of realism and naturalism. However, he did not work photographically. Above all, Sorolla helped to develop the art genre of luminism, which prioritized the detailed reproduction of the motifs in a post-impressionist style with special emphasis on the lighting effects and colors.
Sorolla was a materialistic salon painter who portrayed the rich and powerful. But he was also a socially critical painter who depicted the hard life of ordinary people. At the same time he was a landscape painter and chronicler of Spanish folklore and customs, drawing in the open air on site.
Sorolla came from a humble background. He took part in all major art competitions to advance his career. And he won them all – in Spain and abroad. In 1896 he was honored with the large gold medal at the International Art Exhibition in Berlin.
After major exhibitions in Berlin, Cologne, Vienna and London, Archer Milton Huntington invited him to New York in 1909. Here he showed his works in the Hispanic Society of America, which Huntington founded in 1904. The exhibition was such a success that even then-US President William Howard Taft asked Sorolla to portray him.
Sorolla was not only the most famous Spanish artist of his time. He was also an expert on Spanish customs and traditions. In 1909 Huntington commissioned him to paint the monumental series of paintings “Views of Spain” for the library of the Hispanic Society of America.
Sorolla spent most of his life in Madrid, where his clients lived. But nowhere can you get closer to the painter than in his hometown of Valencia. On the city beaches, in the former fishing district of El Cabanyal, in the winding streets of the old town. One recognizes Valencia’s light and its fragrant orange trees in his paintings.
Art-historical routes lead visitors in the footsteps of Sorolla through the city on the Turia River. The port, the old silk exchange, once more and once more you come across places that Sorolla even immortalized in his paintings. The Plaza del Mercado was the scene of his work “The Call of the Straw Merchant”.
(S E R V I C E – www.centenariosorolla.es)
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