Mediterranean light over New York

New York City communicates with the rest of the world as if it were a network of neuronal connections in constant synapse. The now-permanent electrical networks began to take shape after the arrival of the French, English, and Spanish colonies in what would become the United States, leaving behind some of the most significant cultural exchanges in history. A representation of this cultural exchange is the Hispanic Society of America, located on the Upper West Side and founded by Archer Huntington, a New York philanthropist dedicated body and soul to Hispanic culture.

In this corner of northern Manhattan, far from the neon lights, Huntington collected paintings by artists such as El Greco, Francisco de Zurbarán, Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Goya, and many others, including Joaquín Sorolla, the Valencian painter who had a unique ability to capture light in his work. In 2023, it will be 100 years since the death of Joaquín Sorolla Bastida. In addition to the permanent exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts in Valencia, the Prado, the MET in New York, and the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, temporary exhibitions have also been inaugurated at the Shanghai Metro and the Gallery of the Royal Collections, among others.

This is the tangible force behind the words Sorolla wrote in a letter to Archer Huntington: “I work hard for the future decoration of the Hispanic Society of America [...] but [...] there is so much beauty in Spain that it would fill the entire perimeter of New York.” Taking advantage of one of our trips to Madrid, we had the opportunity to visit Sorolla's temporary exhibition at the Gallery of the Royal Collections and immerse ourselves in its iconic emerald-colored foaming waters. Sorolla also painted figures from the intellectual world of the time, such as Santiago Ramón y Cajal. On this occasion, however, he did not depict the neurons that Ramón y Cajal had described in such detail, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1906. It was a striking and fulfilling discovery for me, coinciding with a period of passion for my own scientific career.

With the conquest of the most important European cities such as London and Paris, Sorolla's leap to America also meant the illumination of New York with the blue hues of the Mediterranean. Shortly after Pearl Street became the first artificially illuminated street in the world, Ramón Pérez de Ayala wrote, "Sorolla's brush was a bundle of solar filaments, which did not leave opaque matter on the canvas, but pure radiation." And so, the Hispanic Society of America remains one of the hidden gems that continues to illuminate the Upper West Side of Manhattan.