Sorolla returns to Valencia
Sorolla returns to his hometown, Valencia. Fourteen of his murals, which were painted between 1912 and 1919, are on temporary loan from the New York Hispanic Society at the Bancaja Cultural Centre until March 31st. The huge paintings, which have been recently restored, represent the artist’s vision of Spain, its cultural diversity and traditions. If you love the Mediterranean, its light, its flavour and colours, you need to visit this exhibition. ‘Vision of Spain’ will travel to Seville, Malaga, Barcelona, Bilbao and Madrid before returning to the USA to the New York Hispanic Society.
Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923) excelled in the painting of portraits, landscapes and monumental works of social and historical themes. Sorolla met Archer M. Huntington in Paris in 1911 and signed a contract to paint a series of oils on life in Spain. The canvases, to be installed in the Hispanic Society of America, would range from 12 to 14 feet in height, and total 227 feet in length. There would be fourteen large panels in all. The major commission of his career, it would dominate the later years of Sorolla’s life.
Huntington had envisioned the work depicting a history of Spain, but the painter preferred the less specific ‘Vision of Spain’, eventually opting for a representation of the regions of the Iberian Peninsula, and calling it The Provinces of Spain. Despite the immensity of the canvases, Sorolla painted all but one en plein air, and travelled to specific locales to paint them: Navarra, Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, Elche, Seville, Andalusia, Extremadura, Galicia, Guipuzcoa, Castile, Leon, and Ayamonte, at each site painting models posed in local costumes. Each painting celebrated the landscape and culture of its region, panoramas composed of throngs of laborers and locals. By 1917 he was, by his own admission, exhausted. He completed the final panel by the middle of 1919.
Sorolla suffered a stroke in 1920, while painting a portrait in his garden in Madrid. Paralyzed for over three years, he died in 1923. The room housing the Provinces at the Hispanic Society of America opened to the public in 1926.
More Information
Vision of Spain: slideshow
Centro Cultural Bancaja
Plaza de Tetuán, 23
46003 Valencia (Valencia)
Phone: +34 96 387 58 64
