Sorolla was one of the greatest representatives of modern Iberian painting at the turn of the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, whose style was a variant of Impressionism and whose best works, painted outdoors, vividly portray Valencia's sunny shoreline.
Sorolla came from a poor family and was orphaned at the age of two. He showed early talent and was admitted to the Academy of San Carlos in Valencia at the age of 15. After further studies in Rome and Paris, he returned to Valencia. Initially he painted historical and social realist works, one of which, Otra Margarita (1892), was his first success. He received the greatest recognition, however, for his genre and landscape paintings. Using heavily impastoed pigments, he combined an impressionistic manner with narrative and anecdotal themes. In London in 1908 he was acclaimed as "the greatest living painter in the world". In 1909 he made his successful United States debut in a one-man show at the Hispanic Society in New York City. The resulting critical acclaim earned him the commission to paint President William Howard Taft in 1909. Upon his return to Spain, he bought a beach house in Valencia on the Mediterranean coast. For the rest of her career, she drew inspiration from the dazzling light of the waters near her home and his beach scenes are characterized by strong contrasts of light and shadow, brilliant colors and vigorous brushstrokes.
Sorolla visited Italy for a long time settling for a period in the splendid Assisi, but above all he returned often and with joy to the Bel Paese, assiduously participating in the Venice Biennials, since its very first edition in 1895, and in the famous Rome International Exhibition in 1911.
Joaquín Sorolla painter of light tells, through about 60 works which narrate his reason for living, painting and his family. In many of his splendid canvases, Sorolla talks about his love for his Clotilde, wife, muse and true life partner, e for the three children, María, Joaquín and Elena. Painter with a refined, spontaneous and immediate language.
The Royal Palace exhibition traces the entire career of Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, from the beginnings in the 1923s in his native Valencia until his death in XNUMX.
The project sees the collaboration of prestigious public and private museum institutions such as the Museo de Bellas Artes in Valencia, the Hispanic Society in New York, the International Gallery of Modern Art of Ca' Pesaro in Venice, the Civic Museums of Udine, Musei di Nervi Raccolte Frugone, just to name a few.
Lastly, the exhibition benefits from the patronage of the Spanish Embassy in Italy, the Spanish Consulate General in Milan, and the Spanish Tourist Board.
Cover painting: Joaquín Sorolla y BastidaIstantanea, Biarritz, 1906, Oil on canvas, 62 x 93,5 cm Madrid, Museo Sorollan° inv. MS 776
