Valencia,
The exhibition program intended to commemorate Sorolla’s centenary has not yet ended outside the painter’s museum in Madrid, which closed its doors on October 1 for rehabilitation and expansion works that are scheduled to last until 2026. The exhibition “At Sea by Sorolla with Manuel Vicent”, which a few weeks ago could be visited there and which has also passed through the Goya Museum in Zaragoza, lands on October 4 at the Valencian Bancaja Foundation: on this occasion, around the vitalist painting of this The author offers us a literary curation, a dialogue between his art and the texts of Manuel Vicent based on the attention of both to the Mediterranean and life with it.
Using works from the collections of the Sorolla Museum, the writer from Castellón has built, on the one hand, a visual itinerary about the dominant presence of the sea in the artist’s canvases and on the other, and based on those same pieces, a story in which he interweaves himself and his biography with that of the painter and with those of all the people who have lived and worked under that same light and next to that sea, who at the end of the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century starred in the compositions by Sorolla and who today may still be able to find themselves or their not-too-distant relatives represented in these scenes.
In this way, two views converge in the montage, that of a painter who came to enjoy his profession to the point of bordering on ecstasy, and that of a writer who has always delved into scenarios common to those of him: they have in common their naturalism; In some way, Vicent comes to follow in the wake of contemporary writers of the painter who also narrated the sea and its trades. He has been concerned with putting words to the life that unfolds in those vibrant scenes with its luminous side (the most obvious) and the less so, without being able to do without, obviously, his own experience. Some literary critics had already referred to the architect of Ballad of Cain, Tram to Malvarrosa either They are from the sea like him Sorolla of our letters for its style that is both realistic and beautiful, sensual and luminous, full of nuances and usually with the Levante as a background.
The exhibition is organized into four sections (The subconscious is full of algae, A naturalistic drama under the light of the Mediterranean, Bourgeois vacationers in Cabanyal and In the sea of Xàbia) and in three basic lines of discourse: Vicent’s account of his reflections on Sorolla’s paintings, inevitably linked to his own memory of the sea since childhood; the narration of daily chores or pleasures on Cabanyal beach, where fishermen converged on the beach, sailors or bourgeois people strolling, different existences sharing the landscape; and, finally, an approach by Vicent himself to the art of Sorolla and his luminist aesthetics, which he also associates with the literature of Blasco Ibáñez (the creator of Reeds and mud He was a friend of the artist).
The tour begins with some of Sorolla’s most luminous paintings (After bathing, Nadadores, Jávea either The little sloop) and with Manuel Vicent’s memory of his childhood and his first discoveries on the beach, an early space of joy and freedom for him (The first summer of my life, when I was only three months old, I spent by the sea and perhaps my brain had unconsciously absorbed the obfuscating glare of the sun on the sand, the salt breeze that spread the smell of seaweed and caulk. of the stranded fishing boats, the rhythmic sound of the waves). The memory of his adolescence and his sensory relief is accompanied here by pieces such as Bath time, Valencia either After bathing, Valencia.
By contrast, the next section will have a place for drama: not only was the Mediterranean a place of joy, but also of work and effort for fishermen and children who participated in the work and who hardly found possibilities for pleasure in the waters. In the words of Vincent, In the background of a dazzling white light there is a black light that blinds you and forces you to squint your eyelids. This aesthetic dialectic between opposites has always accompanied me and, when necessary, has helped me penetrate the deep meaning contained in that fight against the sea that Sorolla’s luminous painting establishes.
To his work (in that section will be collected The arrival of the boats, Valencia; Cordeleros, Valencia; Fisherwoman with her son, Valencia; Valencian fisherwomen either Cabanyal boy) those hardships also arrived: Beneath the light were the miseries and passions of the men of the sea, the blasphemies or the humiliated silences, the storms that occurred on land through jealousy, revenge and shipwrecks expressed in the novel Flor de Mayo, by Blasco Ibáñez.
The counterpoint, bourgeois and idle, is reserved for a third chapter in which the sun does not burn but rather tans and one has the time and relaxation necessary to approach the sea with different eyes: At the beginning of the 20th century, the maritime towns were linked to the summer colonies that the bourgeoisie of Valencia had established on the beach and in them the happy shopkeepers of the city and the fishermen of elemental passions lived together for a few months a year. Some lived in colonial-style houses and others survived in miserable barracks; Some wore pamelas or Panama hats and dressed in white drill fabrics, others were barefoot and hid a knife in their belts.. In this case, we will contemplate some family portraits of the father-in-law and the wife of the creator of sad inheritancedressed in a white in which dozens of nuances derived from light fit.
The exhibition will close by taking us to Jávea, the other usual setting, next to the Cabanyal, where Sorolla tried to appropriate a luminosity that provided him with inspiration and joy. He had gone to that town of Alicante for the first time in 1896, and shared his more than favorable impression in a letter to Clotilde: Jávea sublime, immense, the best I know for painting. Beats everything. The beauty of the environment even becomes a reason for spirituality, rooted in the simplest pleasures close to nature. Of muscat light Manuel Vicent speaks.
A few strokes were enough for Sorolla to convey the charm of these places in Cabo de San Antonio, Jávea; Protichol Island, Jávea; The ferris wheel, Jávea either Javea Sea. It is the last of the enclaves in which this exhibition links the moral and aesthetic attitude of the painter and the writer; We will also be able to see period photographs with the first in the Mediterranean and an audiovisual prepared for this project in which Vicent recounts his experiences linking them to the former’s paintings.
“In the sea of Sorolla with Manuel Vicent”
BANCAJA FOUNDATION
Plaza de Tetuán, 23
Valencia
From October 4, 2024 to March 9, 2025