The first major exhibition in Italy dedicated to the Spanish master of light Joaquin Sorolla

For the first time in Italy, at the Royal Palace from 25 February to 26 June, a monographic exhibition traces the rich and successful artistic production of the great Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (Valencia 1863-Cercedilla 1923).

Little known to the Italian public, Sorolla was one of the greatest representatives of modern Iberian painting at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, contributing significantly to its renewal and opening it to the atmosphere of the Belle Époque.

Among the most loved and appreciated artists of his time both for his great technical quality and for his humble and benevolent character, Joaquín Sorolla obtained a fame that soon went beyond national borders, participating and obtaining prestigious prizes at major international events. However, it will be the coveted Grand Prix, obtained at the famous Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900, that will definitely launch his painting of light and color on the international scene. In London in 1908 he was acclaimed as "the greatest living painter in the world".

Its extraordinary history of international successes often crosses with Italy, starting with a very first stay in Rome won thanks to a scholarship in 1885. Sorolla visited Italy for a long time on this occasion, settling for a period in the splendid Assisi, but above all he often and joyfully returned to the Bel Paese, participating assiduously in the Venice Biennials, since its very first edition in 1895, and in the famous International Exhibition of Rome in 1911. This personal exhibition then presents itself as an excellent opportunity to to re-tie the threads between the great master of light and Italy, a country to which he has always been linked and an opportunity to make his extraordinary art known to the general public through some of the most significant masterpieces of his vast pictorial production.

Joaquín Sorolla, painter of light, tells, through about 60 works, the extraordinary artistic evolution of this ambitious and determined painter, who made art his reason for living. Alongside his deep love for painting, however, Sorolla has always accompanied an even more intense bond with his family, his favorite subject. In many of his splendid paintings, Sorolla tells of his love for Clotilde, wife, muse and true life partner, and for his three children, María, Joaquín and Elena. A bond that nourishes his inspiration and guides the search for the "truth" of the image to be portrayed on the canvas, which can only be generated by real participation and intense emotion. Sorolla's is an intense and magnificent artistic experience, made up of joys and sufferings, satisfactions and research, in which the study of light, rigorously from life and en plein air, even for the most demanding and large-format subjects. , represents the main road of pictorial renewal towards a refined, spontaneous and immediate language.

In the noble setting of the rooms on the first floor of the Royal Palace, the exhibition traces the entire career span of Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, from his beginnings in the 1880s in his native Valencia to his death in 1923 following an cerebral haemorrhage that three years earlier had definitively removed him from painting. By dividing the splendid examples of his artistic research into thematic sections; the gaze on reality, portraits, gardens and light reflections, the sea, tipos and classical studies, the exhibition gives us an exhaustive, human and artistic portrait of the painter.

The project sees the collaboration of prestigious public and private museum institutions such as the Museo de Bellas Artes in Valencia, the Hispanic Society of New York, the International Gallery of Modern Art of Ca 'Pesaro in Venice, the Civic Museums of Udine, by Nervi Raccolte Frugone, just to name a few.

Finally, the exhibition benefits from the patronage of the Spanish Embassy in Italy, the Spanish Consulate General in Milan, the Spanish Tourism Board.