Sorolla Through Light, Valencia
Venue: Fundación Bancaja, València
Dates: 5 October 2023–18 February 2024 .
Light Art Exhibitions co-produced Sorolla through Light with the Museo Sorolla and Fundación Museo Sorolla. After its successful presentation at the Royal Palace of Madrid, Fundación Bancaja hosted the exhibition at its headquarters in València from 4 October 2023 to 18 February 2024.
Curated by Blanca Pons-Sorolla, the painter’s great-granddaughter, and Consuelo Luca de Tena, former director of the Museo Sorolla, this innovative proposal combined original works by Joaquín Sorolla with a multi-sensory gallery and virtual reality experience.
In València, Sorolla through Light presented a total of forty-five original canvases painted between 1890 and 1920 from the Museo Sorolla, Fundación Museo Sorolla, the Hispanic Society of America, the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, the ABANCA Art Collection, the Esther Koplowitz Collection, Fundación Bancaja’s own collection and more than twenty other private collections.
The selection included pieces not shown at the original venue, works that are unfamiliar to the general public, and some of the painter’s most iconic masterpieces, such as Sad Inheritance, After the Bath and The Pink Robe.
The exhibition revisited Sorolla’s legacy by focusing on one of the defining hallmarks of his pictorial style: his rare ability to paint light.
The show’s itinerary allowed visitors to explore some of the most important themes of the painter’s career: the sea and the beach, mostly in scenes set in València and Jávea, but also on the shores of Asturias, Biarritz, San Sebastián, Mallorca and Ibiza; landscapes and gardens, depicted in locations like the Alcázar of Seville, the Alhambra of Granada, La Granja de San Ildefonso, and the garden of his own Madrid residence; and plein-air portraits, a genre that illustrates his masterly use of light and colour.
In addition to the chance to admire original works of art, the exhibition offered a multi-sensory tour through Sorolla’s paintings, photographs and private papers using multiple LED screens and an immersive original soundtrack, plus a virtual reality experience that let visitors travel back to the Valencian artist’s time and the places he frequented. These experience-centred resources were developed with cutting-edge technology and content edited by the curators.