Joaquín Sorolla, flashes of light and colour

The exhibition at the Royal Spanish Academy, organized by the Academy itself, together with the Sorolla Museum and Fundación Museo Sorolla, is one of the many events scheduled for the celebrations of the centenary of the birth of the great Spanish painter, which extends internationally.

The exhibition presents more than 240 original works by Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923), including 205 oil paintings that the artist called "spots" or "notes of colour", conserved in the Sorolla Museum in Madrid. This important aspect of the Valencian painter's production can be observed for the first time in Italy in this exhibition, which is the artist's first ever in Rome. Indeed, in the course of his life, Joaquín Sorolla came to paint about two thousand oil paintings on cardboards or very small tablets, which he generally defined as "notes" but, at times, referred to as "spots" or "color notes". These tablets were transported together with brushes and tubes of color in boxes built ad hoc, and facilitated painting in the open air. The itinerary starts from the three rooms on the ground floor with the works documenting the development of Sorolla's career: the exhibition at the Georges Petit Gallery in Paris in 1906, his artistic maturity between 1904 and 1911, the American exhibitions between 1909 and 1911, the culmination of his production between 1912 and 1919. In the Hall of Portraits, on the first floor, there is also the section created for this Roman occasion entitled "Sorolla, the Real Academia de España in Rome and the origins of small size". The series of "notes" painted in different places in Italy highlight the painter's links with the peninsula through five subjects represented: the views of bustling Italian cities, the artists' studios, travel and the atmosphere of the cafés between Rome and Paris, the representation of the monuments, the composition of the landscape.

Sorolla is one of the great Spanish painters of the twentieth century and has come down to us as the creator of the optimistic image of a bright and Mediterranean Spain. Along with Velázquez and Goya, Sorolla is probably the most loved and popular Spanish artist.

The exhibition is curated by Blanca Pons-Sorolla and María López Fernández.

Photo credits: courtesy of the Royal Spanish Academy official site