The most personal footage of Sorolla’s death

This is the starting point of the exhibition.Sorolla is dead! Long live Sorolla!”opened this Monday Madrid Sorolla Museum and it can be visited until next June. “As if he were an alpha and omega,” says the Ministry of Culture, this exhibition “closes the circle by analyzing the last three years of his life, his most unknown stage, the time when he was already sick and had to stop working.”

first time Sorolla Museum The “enormous resonance” of the painter’s death to the public through the examination of photographs, the press of the period, and documents stored in the museum archive. All these documents, they add, “prove the importance, appreciation, and recognition he has achieved, both nationally and internationally, during a life fully devoted to painting.”

forty pieces

The exhibition consists of 39 pieces of painting, sculpture, photography and documentation. It is a selection of documentary collections in a wide variety of formats: old photographs, correspondence or news from the press of the period, among others. In addition to this selection of documents, Sorolla’s last work, ‘Portrait of Mabel Rick, Señora de Pérez de Ayala’, which was left unfinished by the painter because of suffering while painting, is on display. hemiplegia that would definitely fire him. Two unpublished sculptures were added to this work: the silver and bronze cast funeral mask made on his deathbed by the sculptor and his friend Mariano Benlliure, and the painter’s hand carved by Ricardo Causarás on loan from Valencia City Council. .

This exhibition is part of the celebration of the first centennial of the death of Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923), whose official program began with the opening of the ‘Sorolla’ exhibition at the Sorolla Museum last month. Origins’ focused on the early years of the artist’s production.

Exhibition, “A beautiful and warm morning”, “Diding light”, “Sorolla is dead! Long live Sorolla!” and “Immortal Painter”. “After the death of the Valencian painter, various painters went there to acquire a work. death mask and for take a photo would become iconic images widely used by the press of the time, as illustrated by the lines framing the desired target. The news of the master’s death spread like wildfire,” explains the artist’s museum.

reception in Valencia

“After the preparation of the corpse and the placement of the corpse burning chapel At his home in Madrid, a funeral procession was launched to the Mediodía station, roaming the streets of the city – even a response was said in front of the Museum of Modern Art. When they arrived in Valencia, a huge crowd accompanying the coffin listened to the chords of the Royal Anthem, performed by a company from the Majorcan regiment. Sorolla was buried Valencia in honor of captain general with command in place. His family and friends mourned him inconsolably. The whole town has come to send him off.”they keep going.

Sorolla’s death was also felt in the arts circles, and the press echoed the eulogies that were made or not made to praise her figure, both inside and outside of Spain. “All these displays of love and respect contributed to magnifying Sorolla’s figure and making him the immortal painter he is today,” they note of the Sorolla Museum.