In a gray post-war Spain, the sea, that blue line that merges with the horizon, meant for him. This is what he himself remembers in the video of the exhibition that has just opened at the Palau Martorell in Barcelona, with 86 works by , which on this occasion can be read through the words painted by the Valencian writer, a man also linked to the Mediterranean since his birth. Perhaps for this reason, the writer affirms that the sea evokes not only freedom, but even immortality. If the works in themselves are already luminous, punctuated by these texts they offer a profound and authentic new look. In the sea of Sorolla with Manuel Vicent It can be visited until April 6.
The exhibition, which also includes many photographs showing the painter in his work area, and even the children, women and men he portrayed, especially on Cabanyal beach, but also in Xàbia and Dénia, is a collaboration between the Sorolla Museum and the Sorolla Museum Foundation, which The guest is the writer, who carries out a literary curation around the work of the master of light. The result is a poetic and visual journey where the paintings illuminate the gaze and the words illuminate the emotion. Curious that it coincides with the exhibition dedicated to , where a similar exercise is done with the opposite process. The plastic and audiovisual works accompany the texts of the author of broken mirror.
Returning to Sorolla’s sea, the visitor can get a closer idea of how Sorolla (1863-1923) saw and lived the sea, which in the end is not very different from the experience of Vicent (La Vilavella, Castelló, 1936), who goes so far as to say that when he saw one of his first marine works he had the sensation of having seen them before. They simply reflected with the same blinding force his days at sea: “I already knew it, because knowing is only remembering. Sorolla’s light was wandering like a synthetic idea through the spheres since time was created. The painter did nothing but remember it.”
In Sorolla’s sea are all those who went down or lived on the beach, but his work is much broader, he painted more than two thousand paintings. Naked children are found playing in the sand, like the famous The little sloop (1909), where a little boy plays with a little boat on the shore. “I was also one of those children who sailed on a paper boat… Throughout my life there has not been a safer boat, more resistant when it comes to facing the most hazardous journeys,” the writer recalls on a poster located next to this work.
There was also the bourgeoisie, like Sorolla’s own family. You can see a, Clotilde on the beach (1904), wearing a long white dress, sitting in the swirl of the sea with an umbrella covering herself from the sun, as well as her children, María, Joaquín and Elena, who she portrayed many times, playing or walking in the sand; or his father-in-law, Antonio García, in a summery white suit, resting on a rocking chair with the sun on his face looking at the Mediterranean.
Vicent remembers that at the beginning of the 20th century the maritime towns were linked to the summer colonies of the bourgeoisie, and Sorolla painted looking towards the two worlds, which coexisted for a few months a year. They came out of the colonial-style houses and also from the miserable barracks, as can be seen in the paintings of fishermen jumping into the sea, oxen dragging the boats, women waiting to return with the catch or in the look of a boy from Cabañal.
The exhibition offers some of his most iconic paintings, which will resonate in the eyes of many, such as the aforementioned The little sloop, Bath time, Valencia, The arrival of the boats or Fisherwoman with her son. But also discover lesser-known prints, such as Waiting for the catch, Shipyard, Valencia Beach o In the shadow of the boatwhich reveal this broader view of the experience of the sea, which is not the same for everyone, neither at the beginning of the 20th century, when most of them were painted, nor today, when the Mediterranean gives us back the best and worst side of the human being.
