NEW YORK (EFE).— The “Sorolla Year” debuted yesterday in the United States with an exhibition of the sketches that the painter made for his monumental “Vision of Spain”, waiting for those murals to be visited when the Hispanic reopens Society.
There are 33 works —some are four meters long by one meter wide— made in gouache, with which Sorolla tried out in 1912 what at first would be a frieze on the history of Spain and which ended up being a series of costumbrist portraits, almost anthropological.
Billionaire Archer Huntington, founder of the Hispanic Society and who commissioned the murals, was already aware that the sketches would have great value and stated in the contract that all drafts would remain in New York as part of the collection.
“There are those who consider that the sketches have more artistic value than the murals themselves,” said curator Robert Yahner in the room of the National Arts Club where they are exhibited. The sketches, he added, show a country in motion, with great spontaneity, while the murals end up being too theatrical, the “staging” is visible.
Sorolla unfolded meters and meters of brown paper, very resistant, on which he applied gouache, and in some he used the then very novel technique of “papier collé”, consisting of gluing objects on people and people on the background until several layers of role, as Marcus B. Burke, senior curator of the Hispanic Society, recalled.
Some sketches are more finished than others, and even several of the same region are shown. They are documents that allow us to understand the technique of the Valencian master: sometimes a figure is painted twice because Sorolla understood that the entire composition should revolve around it.
The state of the sketches is very good because the only trip they have made in their existence, in 2015, was made with the intention of being restored as part of a Bancaja project.
After their restoration they were exhibited in Valencia before returning to the Hispanic Society, where they are usually stored because there is not enough space in the building to display all the art it contains.
The Valencian painter knew that Huntington’s commission “would eat up the best years of his life.” according to what he wrote, but he could not reject it: the tycoon paid him 150,000 dollars, equivalent to five million dollars at today’s exchange rate, and they were going to be exhibited with honors in a special room that ended up being called Sorolla.
When beginning the work, Sorolla had a totalizing intention, Burke affirmed. He wanted to put everything on one canvas: the people, the parties, the food, the animals and even the light, which gave rise to some somewhat motley and unnatural scenes, as is the case of the Castilla region.
Then Sorolla changed his mind and when he arrived in Andalusia and the Levante he recorded specific moments, such as a bullfight and the arrival of the boats at the market, which had a more naturalistic aspect.
It is striking that Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao, the three great cities of the time and symbols of modernity, do not appear. Sorolla was portraying a vanishing rural Spain.
Burke stressed that Sorolla’s Spain is festive. The painter himself explained it: “In my travels (in which I shaped the sketches) I am discovering the whole truth, which is far from being the sad note that has invaded our art and our literature. This depends on the artists. They are the sick, not our people”.
