Sorolla. Visions of Spain

On the 14th of January, Instituto Hemingway has prepared a cultural activity for all students. They will be able to discover Spanish culture through the paintings of Sorolla, a famous Spanish painter. We will meet at 4pm at the Institute.

This exhibition will take place in the Fine Arts Museum. It is one of the most famous museums in Spain and is part of a cultural circuit along with the Guggenheim and Maritime Museums. The Fine Arts Museum offers its visitors a new form of audio-visual technology which allows them to listen to commentaries or see statements from different people in order to enjoy the works fully and understand them better.

The collection of the Hispanic Society of America brings together fourteen murals that Sorolla created between 1912 and 1919, in which he depicts his vision of the people and customs of the age in different regions of Spain at that time. The paintings were commissioned by Archer Milton Huntington, the founder of the Hispanic Society of New York, to be placed in the society’s reading room. This is the first time that the paintings have been moved from their original location. The panels are 3.4m high and about 60m long. The collection has been loaned to Bancaja for two years as part of a travelling exhibition which will be visiting Valencia, Seville, Malaga, Bilbao, Barcelona and Madrid.

A master of modern naturalism, Joaquin Sorolla grew up in a modest family and displayed an early interest in painting. He was inspired by Velásquez, Ribera and El Greco. He studied at the school of applied arts in Valencia and continued his studies at the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts. Full of realism, Sorolla’s works show an age of people’s daily lives. However, the strangest aspect in his creations is the light. Every one of his characters seems to be touched or blinded by a burning star; it is a hymn to the sun and to life.

In 1900, Sorolla was awarded the Grand Prix of the Paris World Fair and went to live in New York. He died in 1923.