Sorolla
If there is a painter, who can be admired and enjoyed by novices, I mean, by people without a background in the painting art, this is Joaquin Sorolla, the Spanish painter.
Born in Valencia in the bosom of a humble family, he lost his parents, victims of a cholera epidemic, when he was only two years old. He and his sister were taken by an aunt – his mother’s sister – and her husband, who earned a living as a locksmith. He tried to initiate his nephew into the profession. Sorolla learnt it, but he was already at that time fascinated by painting. His skills in the subject were discovered early, when he was at the secondary school in Valencia and, being thirteen years old, he made the first steps, attending classes in the Artisans School for a period of two years. That would be the beginning of a shining career.
He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Valencia, where he got in touch with other artists and professors. In this first age the Spanish painter of the seventeenth century, Diego Velázquez, was very important, then the curriculum at the School of Fine Arts was devoted to him. After completing his studies and a fruitless participation at The National Exhibition of Fine Art in Madrid in 1881, Sorolla would not only rediscover Velázquez at The Prado Museum, but painters like Ribera or El Greco. Apart from painters of the Spanish Golden Age, another important discovery was done in those formation years: landscape and light in the framework of painting. Definitely, those would be the areas, where Sorolla’s work would stand out. Three years later he would return to Madrid to win the second medal at The National Exhibition of Fine Art. That award was followed by others, feat that would opened several doors to him int the art world, among them a scholarship to study at the Spanish Academy of Fine Arts in Rom.
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jfartogra
- Sept. 22, 2023
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