A total of 46 paintings make up from this Friday the new Sorolla Room of the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia (MuBAV), which will be permanent and traces the painter’s career from his first still lifes to his mature portraits, all twenty days after the centenary of his death.
The room, located in the cloistered building of the Museum, is made up of the largest number of works by Sorolla that have been exhibited to date in the permanent collection of the art gallery, to which are incorporated for the first time the works of the Valencian painter that were part of the Lladró collection, acquired by the Generalitat last year.
Of the collection of works by Sorolla that the museum preserves, made up of a total of 54 -which makes it the second most important public collection of the Valencian painter-, only the works that, due to their special support on paper, cannot be permanently exhibited, remain in storage, as well as those that are in the process of being restored or have been transferred on temporary loan, according to the Generalitat.
This redefinition of the Sorolla Room has been motivated by the incorporation into the collection of the Museo de Bellas Artes de València of the work ‘I am the bread of life’, the largest surviving religious-themed painting by the Valencian master.
The director of the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia, Pablo González Tornel, has stressed that “Joaquín Sorolla is the undisputed protagonist of Spanish painting from the intercentury period” and that “he deserved a room dedicated to his formidable artistic personality in the Pérez Castiel building, destined to be the great reference in art of the 19th and 20th centuries”.
The director has also pointed out that “the Sorolla Room allows us to see all the genres that the genius of light worked on, from landscapes, nudes, portraits or religious paintings”. González recalled that “the Sorolla Room allows us to trace the painter’s career from his first still life, painted when he was a teenager, to his mature portraits, such as that of Isabel Bru”.
These days, visitors, in addition to enjoying the new Sala Sorolla, can also contemplate the temporary exhibition of the ‘Masaveu Collection. Sorolla’, which will remain open until October.
