Javier Alandes and Sorolla: Fire and Light

Javier Alandes is one of these people who seems to radiate so much enthusiasm when he speaks that you worry he might catch fire. And yet we met in a very sedate place, the Gothic cloister of the Carmen Museum in Valencia’s historic centre, a place that radiates serenity, and which was once the San Carlos Academy, where Valencia’s most emblematic painter, Joaquin Sorolla, studied.

The reason for our meeting was to talk about Javier’s book, ‘Las tres vidas del pintor de la luz’.

I don’t read many books in Spanish but I must confess I devoured this one in a few days; it was what Churchill might have described as ‘unputdownable’.

The story begins with a charcoal sketch, which belonged to the great grandfather of one of the characters, Javier. It is signed by Sorolla, but not recognised as part of his work. The real Javier, the author, then combines truth and fiction to resolve the mystery of whether it is authentic or not.

Javier’s quest is one part of the story, the other two ‘lives’ are those of Javier’s great grandfather, and of Sorolla himself.

Javier explained, as his daughter Aitana, herself a fictional character in his first novel, ‘Partido de Vuelta,’ a tale of love and football, listened nearby, that the book has three purposes: to investigate the personal life of the painter, to show how fascinating the lives of our ancestors can be if we can be bothered to investigate our own families, and to pay homage to his own family; like the character in the book, Javier’s great grandfather sold books on the steps of the Faculty of Medicine and developed his business into an important importer and seller of medical equipment.

The novel tells its story by charting real events in Sorolla’s life; his time in Valencia, Italy and finally Madrid, where his house is now the Sorolla Museum, with some real characters and some invented, such as the painter Galaretta, his rival at the Academy, who plays Salieri to Sorolla’s Mozart.

As Javier explained, this created character in reality serves to examine one of the key factors in the book; the artist’s need to overcome not a rival, but himself, in his search for a personal style.

When he is not writing novels (and he usually is) Javier, a graduate in Economics, is a self-employed teacher of soft skills, a guest speaker in many educational institutions, where he tries to help people with good ideas that may not be matched by their ability to express and sell their ideas.

He works at the Centro de Inovación Colap 2.0 at Las Naves complex.

Valencia owes a lot to Sorolla, and has never really paid its debt, his principle works being in New York, the Madrid collection and in private hands or public galleries such as El Prado.

With Javier’s novel it is hoped that a wider public will discover this master of light, who was able to communicate the extraordinary luminosity of Valencia, and to visit or revisit his work.

Javier also helped develop a Sorolla route in Valencia, with the key locations in his life, some of which we will examine in future articles.