How to change your life with Sorolla
by Cesar Suarez
2023: SOROLLA YEAR
A unique biography. A bold look at one of the greatest Spanish painters and his time
«Anyone looking for a biography of Sorolla and his time will find in this book a fascinating and superbly written novel. And anyone looking for a fascinating novel will find at the same time a biography as rigorous as it is entertaining.»
Luis Landero, National Prize for Spanish Literature
Joaquín Sorolla’s work is one of the most popular in the history of Spanish art. Paradoxically, his fascinating life is little known. In demand by the social and intellectual elites of Europe and America, he was one of the great artists of his time, who triumphed in the salons of Paris and in the emerging New York. He inhabited the fascinating world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the development of modernity and the arrival of great inventions. He lived through the frenzy of the Belle Époque, the Madrid of social gatherings and zarzuelas, and the tribulations of the generation of ’98, which criticized the “joy of living” of his paintings.
A tireless worker, discreet, ambitious and demanding of himself, his greatest desires were to paint all day long and to be with his family. His story is that of a successful man who would have preferred a dull existence. An extraordinary life with an unfortunate ending. How was his character forged? Where did his gift come from? What was the Spain like that he saw and captured in his paintings? How did he manage to keep alive the love for his wife since his adolescence?
César Suárez combines biography, essay and fiction in this book that offers a bold vision of Joaquín Sorolla and his time. A journey through scenes from the artist’s life that could perhaps serve as inspiration for our own.
César Suárez Martínez (Madrid, 1975) is a journalist specialising in culture. For the past fifteen years he has been the editor-in-chief of Telva magazine, where he has interviewed leading figures in cinema, music, the arts and literature. He appreciates the usefulness of the useless, well-told stories, voices from the past and clapping in time. On the wallpaper of the computer on which he wrote this book there is a self-portrait by Sorolla from 1909 dedicated to his wife.
Source: https://algunoslibrosbuenos.com/como-cambiar-tu-vida-con-sorolla
