State Secretary for Culture, Fernando Benzo, opens exhibition entitled 'Sorolla en Paris'

Open to the public until 19 March 2017, this is the first exhibition to tell the story behind the international fame of Joaquín Sorolla; from his first trip to Paris in 1885 up to his breakthrough as a great painter standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the elites of his time.

Co-produced with the Kunsthalle Museum in Munich and the Musée des Impressionnismes de Giverny, the exhibition has already been on show in Germany and France, where it was visited by approximately 350,000 people. They were the first single-artist exhibitions to be organised on Joaquín Sorolla in Germany and France since those organised by the artist himself in 1906 and 1907.

Commissioned by Blanca Pons-Sorolla and María López Fernández, the exhibition consists of 66 paintings, of which over half belong to institutions and private collections, such as the Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna Ca'Pesaro (Venice), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia), the Havana Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée d'Orsay (Paris), the Hispanic Society of America (New York), the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, the Bancaja Collection Foundation and the Provincial Council of Valencia. The most important pieces from the Sorolla Museum collection are presented alongside these.

The pieces included in this exhibition represent the major international milestones in the career of Joaquín Sorolla and were chosen by the artist himself for presentation at major international events (such as the Paris Salon, the Venice Biennale and the Munich, Berlin and Vienna Secessions), as well as at single-artist exhibitions organised at the Georges Petit Gallery in Paris and the Edward Schulte Gallery in Berlin.