What makes a painter a great role model? ~
I am often asked who my reference artists are, great masters of the past and contemporary authors. Not an easy answer, artists in history are endless! And just as many today, when visual access to art is global and often overflowing. I look with admiration at Turner, Monet, Hopper, Fattori, Segantini. But also living artists the like of Dean Mitchell or Sean Cheetham. Each of them has something specific that inspires me and pushes me to learn.
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| Under the Awning, on the Beach of Zarautz |
However there is one who somehow represents them all: Joaquin Sorolla (b. 1863, Valencia, Spain). I was blown out at his exhibition at Palazzo Reale in Milan in 2022. It completely overwhelmed me! Not even the visit to the Sorolla Museum in Valencia had such an impact on me.
Why Sorolla?
Because his work expresses a complete range of fundamental aspects of pictorial art, in his case in oil but not only.
- The composition of his scenes, often complex, with unusual angles and a combination of figures and landscape, never intimidated by very large size.
- The absolute mastery of drawing, which emerges from proportions and anatomy.
- His tonal strategy and his sense of light. For me his dynamic power surpass Caravaggio, the monument to tonalism.
- Sorolla's palette is an infinite vocabulary of colours, warm and cool, often high key -- which make his phrasing very rich, like the timbres of an orchestra.
- Finally his alla prima brushwork, energetic, fat and sensual. It ties everything together in a rhythm and a fantastic dance!
As if that weren't enough, many of Sorolla's masterpieces were painted en plein air. He's not the only artist to do this for sure -- Monet and Cezanne even a little before him. But he worked outdoors on larger formats and in challenging conditions, on the seashore, under blinding light and with water, boats and figures in motion. For days.
He was able to transfer this vibrancy to his studio works as well.
Studying Joaquin Sorolla therefore means for me studying almost everything about the artistic practice of painting. He became a model later in my career. This means to me that reference models change over time and are perhaps an achievement of maturity. Just at the stage where you no longer need to imitate them.
Happy Art Life! - Francesco
PS. Sorolla is a genius of alla prima painting, which was re-actualized by a great personality of recent times, Richard Schmid. The American master who passed away a few years ago, influenced a couple of generations of oil painters around the world with his iconic book Alla Prima.
PPS. There are so many historical and contemporary artists that I admire. I think I will need more posts to talk about it. So be ready by signing up now and receive my (News) Artist Letters!
