The face of Joaquín Sorolla, designed by Escif for the artists Latorre and Sanz, will probably be one of the most photographed as of this afternoon, because its location at the entrance to Plaza de la Reina will welcome the thousands of falleros and falleras that this afternoon start the first part of the Offering to the Virgin, which begins today at 4:00 p.m.
The Reina-Paz-San Vicente fault has turned the bust of the Valencian painter into a viewpoint where visitors look out to contemplate, through the windows of their eyes, the social evolution after two years of pandemic and many urban reforms in its immediate environment.
The failure competes in section 2ºA; and one category below, in 2ªB, another with similar characteristics and the same character in its auction, the illustrious Joaquín Sorolla (at the time of closing this article, Falla’s prizes were not yet known). The proposal comes from the hand of the falla L’Alguer-Ingeniero Rafael Janini who, from the Algirós neighborhood, recreates the vision of the painter from his vantage point, observing with sadness how the landscapes that he masterfully painted have changed.
The work signed by Rafael and Raúl Martínez Reig, from Estudio Chuky, thus honors the Valencian whose year the Valencian Community celebrates in 2023, in commemoration of the centenary of his death and with the aim that citizens can deepen their knowledge of his legacy.
Its artist Raúl Martínez explains that this year has been an “artistic coincidence, which sometimes happens” and highlights that in this case it has been “more flagrant than normal because we have focused on the same aesthetics”. To face the challenge of reproducing Sorolla’s impressionism, the artist has had the support of Toni López.
In his case, the idea has been to use the passage of time as a tool to make the criticism of falla more classic and that passage of time is reflected in different scenes that connect the Sorolla of always with the present.
Thus, there is a photocall so that falleros and visitors can take a selfie with the painter’s paintings, a criticism of the ‘posturing’ that invades social networks, details the artist who is also responsible for the script.
There is also a scene dedicated to the relationship between Sorolla and his wife, Clotilde, to whom he sent letters that here have become an informal WhatsApp chat conversation. The texts are the work of Javier Alandes, author of Las tres vidas del pintor de la luz (Editorial Sargantana, 2019), a historical fiction about a painting attributed to Joaquín Sorolla.
Another of the cultural tributes that the Fallas collect this year is the one that the Sagunt-Sant Guillem commission pays to Nino Bravo in the bravo de la Saïdia. “The death of Nino Bravo shocked the entire country, an unequivocal sign of how loved he was by the whole world. The fault is a great heart tied to the ground with ropes, with the strength and affection of an entire neighborhood,” they explain from the commission, which also celebrates the fact that the singer of Aielo de Malferit lived in the neighborhood, near the demarcation of the fault.
The falla is the work of ‘Falles Revolution’, the Instagram alter ego of the artist Javi Valiente who planted his first falla with the exclusive collaboration of the workshop of maestro Manolo Martín. “It has been an honor that an artist with the trajectory and journey of Manolo Martín said yes to me. Ours was an artistic crush and we have made a good tandem. We have understood each other perfectly. It’s nice,” explains Valiente.
