On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Real Academia de España in Rome , the celebrations of the centenary of the death of Joaquín Sorolla (Valencia, 1863 - Cercedilla, 1923), one of the most famous painters of his era, arrive in the capital with the exhibition Joaquín Sorolla, flashes of light and colour, which opens on 21 March.

Organized by Academia de España in Rome, Museo Sorolla and Fundación Museo Sorolla, Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), it is the only Italian stage of the exhibition – already presented at the Sorolla Museum in Madrid, at the Fundación Bancaja in Valencia, at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, at the Palau Martorell in Barcelona – with a section especially designed for the Academy .

Furthermore, 2023 also marks the 150th anniversary of the Academy and this exhibition, curated by Blanca Pons-Sorolla and María López Fernández , represents an opportunity to explore the relationship between Sorolla, the artistic circles of Rome and the Academia de España: in fact the artist went to Italy on many occasions and in particular to Rome between 1885 and 1889 , subsidized by the Diputación de Valencia.

The exhibition features more than 240 original works by the artist, including 205 oil paintings that the artist called "spots" or "color notes", conserved in the Sorolla Museum in Madrid. This important aspect of the Valencian painter's production can be observed for the first time in Italy in this exhibition, which is the artist's first ever in Rome .

The itinerary starts from the three rooms on the ground floor with the works documenting the development of Sorolla's career : the exhibition at the Georges Petit Gallery in Paris in 1906, his artistic maturity between 1904 and 1911, the American exhibitions between 1909 and 1911, the culmination of his production between 1912 and 1919. In the Salone dei Ritratti, on the first floor, the section created for this Roman occasion entitled "Sorolla, the Real Academia de España in Rome and the origins of the small format ”. The series of "notes" painted in various places in Italy highlight the painter's links with the peninsula through five subjects represented: the views of bustling Italian cities, the artists' studios, travel and the atmosphere of the cafés between Rome and Paris, the representation of the monuments, the composition of the landscape.