The light and its tones. Sorolla was, perhaps, the one who best knew how to capture all the tones with those close, familiar landscapes, which made him an international reference. Yesterday Bancaja presented a re-reading of the Valencian painter’s art in Sorolla through light, with an expanded selection of original works that brings together 45 canvases dated between 1890 and 1920, four of them unpublished.
The exhibition reviews Sorolla’s legacy from one of the essential particularities of his painting: his mastery in the pictorial representation of light. The exhibition route allows us to approach essential themes in Sorolla’s career such as the sea and the beach with scenes located mainly in Valencia and Jávea, but also on the coasts of Asturias, Biarritz, San Sebastián, Mallorca and Ibiza; the landscapes and gardens with creations inspired by spaces in the Alcázar of Seville, the Alhambra in Granada, La Granja and the garden of his own house in Madrid; and outdoor portraits, a genre that reflects his masterful use of luminosity and color.
Organized in co-production with Light Art Exhibitions, the Sorolla Museum and the Sorolla Museum Foundation and with the collaboration of the Generalitat Valenciana, the exhibition offers an innovative proposal in which the original work of Joaquín Sorolla is complemented with the experience of a sensory room and another virtual reality.
After passing through the Royal Palace of Madrid as one of the most visited exhibitions of the season with more than 180,000 visitors, Sorolla through light is presented in Valencia with an expanded selection of original works that brings together 45 canvases dated between 1890 and 1920 and from the Sorolla Museum, the Sorolla Museum Foundation, the Hispanic Society of America, the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, the ABANCA Art Collection and the Esther Koplowitz Collection, as well as twenty private collections and the Bancaja Foundation itself .
The set of works includes pieces that are presented for the first time in this exhibition or are very little known to the public, as well as some of the painter’s masterpieces such as Sad Inheritance!, After the Bath. The Pink Robe or The Return of Fishing.
Along with the contemplation of the original work, the exhibition offers a sensory journey along an area of ??215 square meters of LED multi-screens in which there are a total of 32 million pixels. The set projects hundreds of moving images made up of paintings of different formats, photographs and newspaper articles, accompanied by drawings and personal writings. A visual set that immerses the viewer in an emotional journey through Sorolla’s works that allows them to get closer to his figure on a personal and professional level.
The tour is completed with a virtual reality experience that allows visitors to travel back in time and to the settings in the life of the Valencian artist. These didactic and experiential resources have been developed with the most innovative technologies and under the editorial coordination of the curators.
Within the complementary activities, a catalog has been published that includes the reproduction of the exhibited works, as well as texts of analysis and contextualization of the paintings and a chronology with milestones in Sorolla’s life and career made by Blanca Pons-Sorolla and Consuelo Luca de Tena.
The exhibition is part of the special programming to mark the centenary of the death of Joaquín Sorolla in 2023, an event declared an Event of Exceptional Public Interest (AEIP) by the Ministry of Culture and Sports, and takes place within the framework of the tenth anniversary of the new Bancaja Foundation.
Sorolla through light can be visited from October 5 to February 18, 2024 at the Bancaja Foundation headquarters in Valencia (Plaza Tetuán, 23). Tickets can be purchased at ventas.com, at El Corte Inglés and at the box office.
