Exhibitions
Sorolla and Vicent generate a dialogue of light, sea and words at the Palau Martorell
The exhibition 'At Sorolla's Sea with Manuel Vicent' brings together 86 works from the Sorolla Museum and accompanies them with a literary story that revisits the Mediterranean universe of the Valencian painter.
The works of the Valencian painter Joaquín Sorolla return to the Palau Martorell and do so, this time, in a proposal that combines pictorial art with the literary word. The exhibition, entitled En el mar de Sorolla amb Manuel Vicent , offers a dialogue between the master's canvases and the texts of the Castellón writer. It can be enjoyed —and read— from December 5 to April 6, 2026.
This is not the first time that Sorolla has occupied the rooms of the Palau Martorell: at the end of 2022 he inaugurated the space with Caçant impressiones , a major exhibition that brought together 193 oils from the Sorolla Museum. Now, visitors have the opportunity to get even closer to the way the painter (1863-1923) understood and lived the sea. An experience that, according to Manuel Vicent (la Vilavella, Castellón, 1936), is not so far from his own. The author explains that, when contemplating one of Sorolla's first seascapes, he experienced the sensation of having seen it before, as if that landscape were intimately familiar to him. And the fact is that in the universe of Al mar de Sorolla, all those who went down to the beach every day or lived there parade, although the painter's work is immense: throughout his career he created more than two thousand paintings.
This new exhibition brings together 86 works from the Sorolla Museum in Madrid, currently closed for works. And it is precisely Vicent who gives literary voice to this Mediterranean universe. "That sensory experience of the sea that has looked at me so many times: that light, that shiny sand, that smell of caulking and pitch, the boats, the fights, the screams that are lost on the beach, the heat... I had already experienced all of this, and when I saw his paintings I said to myself: "This one has painted what I had felt." With this confession, the veteran writer and journalist —a true poet of the sea and light, like his Valencian compatriot— sums up the affective and sensory bond that articulates the exhibition. In addition to signing the story that accompanies the works, he has also made the selection.
The tour allows you to discover landscapes of Malvarrosa, Xàbia and possibly some corners of Cabanyal, but now the scenes acquire new nuances thanks to the text that accompanies them. The exhibition invites you to observe how Sorolla knew how to capture the vibration of light, the changing color and the intense life of its beaches, and how Manuel Vicent reinterprets each scene with a writing that broadens and deepens its emotional dimension.
With the collaboration of the Sorolla Museum and the incorporation of photographs by the painter, the exhibition becomes a tribute to light, the sea and the Mediterranean soul. The visitor can delve not only into the master's pictorial gaze, but also into Vicent's intimate and poetic reading of this maritime universe. The result is an experience that celebrates the everyday beauty of the Valencian coastline and vindicates the evocative power of art when it enters into conversation with words.
