“Valencia Beach, illustrates Joaquín Sorolla’s mastery in sketching, concentrating in a reduced space the purest and most vivid vibration of light and color of the Valencian beaches.

The technical virtuosity that Joaquín Sorolla achieved with his pictorial work consecrated him as the painter of light par excellence. However, the scope of his artistic corpus goes far beyond his well-known canvases in which he captured like few others the light effects of the Mediterranean.

Throughout his life, the Valencian artist painted about 2000 oil paintings on small boards and tablets (almost half of the total works attributed to the artist) that, like the one we present here, have become in their own right great jewels in the production of the Valencian master.. The works on cardboard or reused boards to which the painter gave a second life give us the opportunity to approach the most daring and experimental Sorolla, concentrating in just 20 centimeters all the genius and mastery that the painter exhibited in his large format works.

At the beginning, these paintings remained in the most absolute intimacy of the artist, who covered the walls of his studio with these small works that he considered the most intimate and personal. However, the succession of captured fleeting instants that made up each of these scenes made him understand the individual value they contained, and he decided to show them to the public for the first time on his American tour in 1909. The reception by the public, who showed the same enthusiasm that awakened the large format works, only confirmed the value of these creations in which Sorolla shows his purest side.

Conceived as natural studies where he concentrated all the artistic ideas that boiled in his head, Sorolla captured in each and every one of the motifs with which he achieved an international prestige within the reach of only the greatest.

Thus, his famous beach scenes, whether in Valencia, Biarritz or San Sebastián, became the most famous in the world. transformed through this format into experiments of light and color executed with a quick, pulsating and spontaneous brushstroke, until giving way to small frames of everyday life that, like a vivid instant, allow us to almost feel and smell the atmosphere of his adored Mediterranean.

The vital importance of this aspect of Sorolla’s production to understand the trajectory, evolution and dimension that his work acquired is absolutely reaffirmed by the multiple exhibitions, such as those held at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao or at the Fundación Bancaja, which have been dedicated monographically to this format thanks to which we are introduced to the most essential Sorolla, synthetic and daring, always ready to face new visual challenges.

Awarded in Setdart for 130.000€.

Awarded in Setdart for 100.000€.

There is no doubt that the resounding success of the most international Valencian artist of all times will be forever linked to his particular vision of life on the beaches of the Mediterranean, where Sorolla was able to free himself from academicist constraints to give free rein to his freest and most revolutionary creative character.