Summer Days
From Sorolla to Hopper
28 March - 6 September 2015
Mariano Fortuny
Nude Boy on the Beach at Portici
ca. 1874 Oil on panel, 7.5 x 13 cm San Telmo Museoa, Donostia
Cecilio Pla
ca. 1924-1925
Oil on card, 14,5 x 24
Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on deposit at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Paul Cézanne
ca. 1898
Colour lithograph on paper,
42.6 x 52.4 cm Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao
42.6 x 52.4 cm Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao
Bathers
The medical theories that disseminated the benefits of the coastal climate and sea bathing in the mid-1800s gave a new meaning to the sea. Aside from the logical fascination it continued to hold as a landscape and its depiction as a context for fishermen’s work, it also became a subject for paintings featuring bathing establishments, sea baths and naked children in a playful context unrestricted by social and moral conventions and constraints.
Eschewing a genre approach, avant-garde artists also turned to bathers as a subject in their search for a new type of figurative art and their exploration of its relationship with space.