UNTIL SUNDAY 11/6
MUSEO BB.AA. Pius V, 9
Yes friends, Sorolla again in this 2023 which commemorates the centenary of the painter's death, this time with our sights set on a young Sorolla in training who had already left great glimpses of his talent but had not yet molded the traits that would make him internationally famous.: its luminous scenes (that light!) and customs bathed in a certain hedonism. The Sorolla less Sorolla. The Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia has teamed up with the Sorolla Museum of Madrid to bring us the undercooked Sorolla. He started painting very young and with 21 years he earned a pension (a scholarship) from the Provincial Council of Valencia to travel to Rome, where he produced works that you can see on display until July on the other side of the river, in the sample Sorolla in Rome from the Scala Palace. He won it with the canvas The scream of the palleter, this one yes, exhibited in Sorolla. origins as one of the great jewels of the route for its color and dynamism. It is a historical painting, very fashionable of the moment, but it illustrates an episode little treated in art because it is purely Valencian: the harangue of “el palleter” calling to stand up to the French from the steps of La Lonja. Thanks to her I would go to Rome, and everything he painted before is what is seen in this exhibition about a Sorolla who is forging his personality but already has traces of genius.
He began at the School of Artisans and at the Royal Academy of San Carlos where the painters with formal education of the time gave their first brushstrokes., copying classics like Velázquez (very influential on him and on many other painters) and painting the effects of nature outdoors. In the exhibition you can see exterior paintings of Madrid neighborhoods or processions in Valencia and Sagunto with clear influence by Pinazo. The orientalist theme was also in vogue and permeates some of his pieces., between them, An Arab examining a gun (1881), proof that the young Sorolla dared with all the themes that were within his reach. He entered several local and national competitions with still lifes., paintings of flowers and seascapes that, sometimes, they passed without pain or glory, and demonstrated his expertise in the genre of portraiture with which he would be crowned at the end of the 19th century.. his father-in-law, the photographer Antonio García Peris, He recommended that he paint large-format historical scenes if he wanted to win awards., It is what was worn at the time, and there we have the enormous canvas second of may (like in The scream of the Palleter, about the War of Independence against the French) guarded by the Prado Museum. It has not been possible to bring it to Valencia due to its large dimensions, but the void has been filled with his sketch and pieces of some of his characters: a child killed in foreshortening or the study of the head of Luis Daoiz, a soldier who actively participated in the Madrid uprising against the French on May 2, 1808. to paint it, Sorolla set up a real performance in the bullring of Valencia firing gunpowder cannons that helped him effectively recreate the roar of the battle. It is painted naturally and seeks to capture the moment, as happens with The scream of the Palleter, that moves away from the bombast of canonical historical painting to approach provincial customs. “To win medals you have to paint dead people”, they told them. And he won them, wow if he won them, also international respect, and a lot of money. S.M.
