Aim of Ibiza

Aim of Ibiza, or Apunte de Ibiza as originally titled by Joaquin Sorolla, is a loose and expressive landscape painting from an unknown date, likely to have been the very early 20th century.

If we look directly at the composition in front of us, it can take a little while to start to spot elements of the scene because of how the artist has chosen to work quickly and avoid refining the detail too precisely. This brings a level of abstraction to the artwork, where we must use our imagination in order to turn this image into a real landscape. During the early 20th century there was a massive push towards styles such as these, where academic or realism approaches were replaced with a greater use of emotion as the root inspiration. Sorolla would not become an abstract artist himself, but in this example is perhaps simply enjoying some quick work whilst outdoors, and not intending for Aim of Ibiza to ever actually be sold privately. Despite that intention, the artwork would now be worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars, because of its connection to this famous Spanish artist as well as the content which is close to our favourite genre from his career - seascapes combined with portraiture.

The composition here features very thick dabs of paint that have been intentionly left that way - white strokes of paint are visible even from the small image of the artwork that we have included here. We find a rocky road in the foreground, with mounds either side. Behind is a snapshot of the blue sea snaking past as well as a further small island in the background, complete with a lighthouse. Sorolla deliberately places the lighthouse within the centre, horizontally, which allows it to catch our eye almost immediately, even though it is fairly faint in the background, just in front of a similarly toned sky. The style of brushwork might remind some of the work of Mondrian, a Dutch painter who transitioned over time into a truly abstract artist and during this process produced some landscapes which varied in their brushwork and detail. Some examples of this would be the likes of Woods near Oele, Church Tower at Domburg and Dune IV.

We could not discover a huge wealth of information on Aim of Ibiza which suggests that it might now reside within a private collection as most of Sorolla's paintings that are on display within public collections tend to have been well researched by now. The size of the brushwork strokes also suggests that this might have been a relatively small artwork, perhaps produced on a whim whilst out walking on the island. Ibiza itself is famed for its beauty and bright blue water, making it ideally suited to this artist's career, with seascapes becoming the most famous genre in which he was involved, even though he repeatedly tried out different challenges across his career, including portraiture and social realim as well.