Bankia S A : participates in the exhibition ‘Sorolla. Femenino plural’ at Fundación Bancaja

• The exhibition, which will be on display at the headquarters of Fundación Bancaja, will be open until 30 May
• Co-produced with the Museo Sorolla and the Fundación Museo Sorolla, it offers an interpretation of the presence of the female figure in the painter's artistic production

Bankia participates in the exhibition 'Sorolla. Femenino plural', organised by the Fundación Bancaja and which will be on display until 30 May at the headquarters of the Foundation. The exhibition, a co-production with the Museo Sorolla and the Fundación Museo Sorolla, offers an interpretation of the presence of the female figure in the painter's artistic production and attests to the role of women in Spanish society in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

This review of the representation of the world of women in the work of Joaquín Sorolla is carried out through more than fifty works from the collections of the Museo Sorolla, Fundación Museo Sorolla, Fundación Bancaja, Museo del Prado, Diputació de València, Museo de Bellas Artes de València, Abelló Collection, BBVA Collection, Pedrera Martínez Collection, San Sebastián Kur Gallery, Álvarez de Miranda Collection and Universidad Complutense de Madrid, as well as other public and private collections.

The exhibition reveals that the female presence is abundant and varied in the painter's production, sensitive to aesthetic qualities such as grace or beauty, but above all, other qualities such as courage or strength.

His work includes many of the female stereotypes of his time: angels of the home, fallen women, simple and hard-working townswomen, elegant bourgeois and 'modern' women; but they are rarely only 'types': they are individual people, of flesh and blood, and, as such, Sorolla always treats them with respect.

Sorolla's life coincided with the beginnings of the feminist movement in Spain, but this was still very much a minority movement: Spanish women still had a very low cultural level, few had access to secondary education, and access to university was practically banned until 1910. When Sorolla died in 1923, it would still be another eight years before the recognition of women's right to vote.

As for the right to vote, it would not be recognised until 1931 (Sorolla never saw it happen: he had died in 1923). The painter, who was never a militant, was characterised as a man of liberal ideas and he maintained close relations with the Free Institution of Education, promoter of female education and advocate for equality, where he educated his daughters.

The exhibition is divided into five blocks: history, mythology and other pretexts; townswomen; working women and mothers; elegant and modern; and family scenes.

This last block has been incorporated in the presentation of the exhibition in Valencia as an extension of the work exhibited with respect to its presentation at the Museo Sorolla in Madrid in 2020.

A catalogue has been published for the exhibition, with a reproduction of the works accompanied by texts written by the two curators, Estrella de Diego and Guadalupe Gómez Ferrer. In addition, within the cultural mediation programme, guided tours and educational workshops will be held aimed at different groups of people with functional diversity, people at risk of exclusion and schoolchildren.