He Sorolla Museum it opened its doors in 1932. And there are almost 365 days a year to visit it. But the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, decided that today was a good day to do it for the first time. Everything was perfect, except that at the same time one of the star exhibitions of the Sorolla Year was being presented at the Royal Palace (the centenary of his death is commemorated). The director of the museum, Enrique Varela, announced among the participants in the press conference, could not arrive on time and had to be replaced by the president of the Permanent Commission of the Sorolla Museum Foundation, Antonio Mollá. Minutes before, Heritage staff was struggling to remove the sign from the table.
And it is that Varela had to stay in the museum to receive Pedro Sánchez during the visit, which lasted around an hour. Accompanied by the Minister of Culture, Miquel Iceta; the general director of Fine Arts, Isaac Sastre de Diego; the deputy director general of State Museums, Mercedes Roldán, and the director of the museum, visited both the temporary exhibition, ‘Origins’, which analyzes the artist’s first works, and the permanent collection on display in the painter’s former home. after the visit noted on his Twitter account: “This morning I visited the @MuseoSorolla. I enjoyed a unique journey through the early work of the brilliant Valencian painter. Anatomies, seascapes, still lifes, landscapes, the influence of Velázquez… Don’t miss it. It’s wonderful! ! #YearSorolla2023”
‘Sorolla through the light’, which can be visited at Madrid’s royal palace from February 17 to June 30 and is curated by Blanca Pons-Sorolla, the artist’s great-granddaughter and leading expert on his work, and Consuelo Luca de Tena, former director of the Sorolla Museum. Actually, there are three exhibitions in one. opens with two sensory rooms (better known as immersive experiences), in which images of the painter’s masterpieces are projected with extremely high resolution, accompanied by music and movement. The figures in the paintings move. The tour continues with four rooms that exhibit 24 canvases by Sorolla, most of them little known and that private collectors have lent (a rarely seen self-portrait, portraits of his wife, Clotilde, and his daughters María and Helena, portraits of the Royal Family, landscapes and gardens) and ends with the virtual reality.
Thanks to state-of-the-art glasses, we immersed ourselves in the Malvarrosa beach in Valencia hand in hand with one of the artist’s best-known paintings, and slipped into his studio. The experience lasts seven minutes. He exhibition price varies according to the days: 12 euros, from Monday to Wednesday; 14 euros, Thursday and Friday, and 16 euros, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. The exhibition will travel later, although with a different selection of paintings, to Valencia and Dallas.