Sorolla Catalogue Raisonné. Painting Collection of The Museo ... by Blanca Pons-Sorolla

Paired with the exhibition, it prompts a new appreciation of this Spanish master. The scholarly catalog that accompanies the exhibit - which includes an essay by Velásquez and multiple contributions by Pons-Sorolla, who curated the show - is an important contribution to the literature on Sorolla. since the early 1900s and others that have never been seen or never been seen in context. With more than 150 images that illuminate every facet of Sorolla’s artistic pursuits - from his iconic, turn-of-the-century masterworks to sketches he made on the back of a menu while dining at the Savoy in New York - it fills multiple galleries.Īmong the most intriguing works are numerous paintings and drawings that have not been seen in the U.S. It’s the most significant exhibition Velásquez has presented during her three-year tenure as director of the museum and is a milestone in the institution’s exhibition history. “Sorolla and America,” which opened late last year in Dallas and is headed to Madrid’s Fundación Mapfre later this year, is now at the San Diego Museum of Art. We are going to do it with you.’ ” Renewed appreciation “You could say it’s all connected, it’s natural,” Velásquez said. Pons-Sorolla and Mark Roglán, director of Southern Methodist University’s Meadows Museum in Dallas, were planning a groundbreaking exhibition that would for the first time show much of the work that Sorolla produced or exhibited in America, and they were looking for a collaborator.

Nearly two decades and several Sorolla exhibitions later, when she became director of the San Diego Museum of Art, she soon discovered that the first painting given to the museum for its permanent collection in 1925 was Sorolla’s “María at La Granja,” which remains one of the museum’s treasures.Īnd then soon after Velásquez was appointed, Sorolla’s great granddaughter, art historian and author Blanca Pons-Sorolla, whom Velásquez had met in the early ’90s, paid her a visit. She traveled from Havana to Madrid looking for an answer and researching an exhibition of Sorolla’s work she curated for the Museo Nacional de San Carlos in 1992. Above: A 1909 self-portrat by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida.

Sorolla Catalogue Raisonné. Painting Collection of The Museo ... by Blanca Pons-Sorolla