Impressions of a Forgotten Impressionist

“It’s very important to rediscover artists who have sort of fallen through the cracks,” said Nora Desloge, curator of European art at the San Diego Museum of Art, as she talked about the museum’s upcoming retrospective of Spanish Impressionist Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida. “Joaquin Sorolla: Painter of Light,” which opens Saturday, includes about 95 of the artist’s works, including beach scenes, landscapes, garden interiors and portraits.

“While he was wildly popular in his own day, by the time he died, Cubism, Surrealism and other art forms had taken over the public’s attention and Sorolla was basically forgotten,” said Desloge, noting that Sorolla, who lived from 1863 to 1923, “certainly was the most popular artist of his day in America, as well as in Spain.”

In fact, “Painter of Light” marks exactly 80 years since Sorolla’s United States premiere--a one-man show in New York that drew 160,000 visitors during a monthlong run in 1909.

“We’ve reached a post-modernist age, and people are now rediscovering older forms of art,” said Desloge, coordinating curator of “Painter of Light.” “The show has met with tremendous critical and public reviews.”

The exhibition, which in November will travel to the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno in Valencia, Spain, comes to San Diego after shows at the IBM Gallery of Science and Art in New York and the St. Louis Art Museum.

GLASNOST: The first joint presentation of vanguard Soviet and American artist, and the first museum exhibition ever assembled to tour in both the Soviet Union and United States, opens Thursday at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

“10+10: Contemporary Soviet and American Painters” is composed of 67 paintings of varied styles by 10 artists (all under the age of 40) from each country.

Soviet artists represented in the exhibition are Yuri Albert, Vladimir Mironenko, Yuri Petruk, Leonid Purygin, Andrei Roiter, Sergei Shutov, Alexei Sundukov, Vadim Zakharov, Anatoli Zhuravlev and Konstantin Zvezdochetov. The American artists are David Bates, Ross Bleckner, Christopher Brown, April Gornik, Peter Halley, Annette Lemieux, Rebecca Purdum, David Salle, Donald Sultan and Mark Tansey.

The exhibition was organized by the Ministry of Culture of the U.S.S.R., the Texas-based international nonprofit exhibition organization InterCultura, and the Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth, Tex. The San Francisco showing is the exhibition’s only scheduled California presentation.

COMPETITION: The Pasadena Arts Commission is holding a public art competition for design teams with a minimum of one artist and one landscape architect, at least one of whom must be experienced in public art and the collaborative process. The winning team will be commissioned to create and implement a complete artistic concept for the courtyard and landscape areas of the new Pasadena Police Building. The deadline for entries is Sept. 14.

Prospectus packages detailing the scope of the project and eligibility requirements are available through the Pasadena Arts Commission, 150 S. Los Robles, Suite 420; the Pasadena City Hall, Rm. 237, 100 N. Garfield; and Pasadena recreation centers and libraries.

ENTRIES: The Long Beach Art Assn. Gallery is requesting works from living California photographic artists for its “California Regional Photo Show.” The gallery is also seeking paintings, sculptures and prints from living artists in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Utah for its “Seven Western States” open show. The deadline is Sept. 9 for both shows.

For more information or a prospectus on either of the competitions, call Tick Weber at (213) 438-4362.

FELLOWS, SCHOLARS: Two predoctoral fellows and two postdoctoral fellows have been selected by the Getty Center for the History of Art to be in residence in Santa Monica for the 1989-90 academic year. Joining the Center will be: Stephan Barthelmess, a Ph.D. candidate focusing on 20th-Century Architectural History at the University of Munich; Sylvia Lavin, a Ph.D. candidate studying early 19th-Century French architectural history and theory at Columbia University; James Herbert, Ph.D., who focused on French 20th-Century art history at Yale University; and Yvonne Spielmann, Ph.D., who studied avant-garde art and film at the University of Hannover, West Germany. During their residency, the fellows will work either on completing their dissertations or preparing already completed dissertations for publication.

The Getty Center has also selected 13 scholars to participate in its scholar program for the 1989-90 academic year.

The Getty Scholar Program is designed to bring together art historians and scholars in the social sciences and humanities to foster an interdisciplinary re-examination of the arts in cultures past and present.