José Luis Picón I Málaga, (EFE).- The couplet that Picasso recited to a group of people from Málaga who visited him in France was the spark that inspired the book “Y Picasso remembered flamenco”, by the journalist Francis Mármol, who wants to claim that the artist was in love with the music of his land throughout his life.
“Goodbye, prison yard, corner of the barbershop, whoever has no money, they shave with cold water” read that song that Picasso recalled in 1957, he explains in an interview with EFE Mármol, who will present the book this Monday in the cultural center La Térmica de Málaga, which has published it.
The seventeen stories it contains arose from searching newspapers from the 19th and early 20th centuries that showed how, “at that time, which coincides with Picasso’s childhood, Malaga was a true flamenco mecca, with up to a dozen open cafés and all the great figures passing through the city”.
Added to this was the interview that Mármol did with José Guevara Castro, one of the painters who traveled to see Picasso and honor him in Cannes, and who was the one who revealed to him that, when asked what he remembered about his native Malaga, “the first thing he he let go was that lyric from the cantes del Piyayo”.
The flamenco that Picasso heard as a child
“I thought that in Malaga, where Picasso has been associated with everything that has existed and has never been, he had never been associated with the dominant music of his time, on the streets and in places of leisure, because his father was a great consumer in nightclubs and Picasso must have heard those echoes of flamenco at home”.
In the book, he has taken these stories “of a Picasso child who is going to meet those flamenco characters” to the realm of fiction and has spun them through a character like Paco Promesa.
“Actually his name was Paco Jurado and he was a guitarist from Melilla, but settled in Malaga, who gave guitar lessons to Jacqueline Roque, Picasso’s last wife, who gave him a guitar painted by him, which after a while Paco managed to change for a flat in Torremolinos”, says Mármol.
The three women of Juan Breva
In these fictitious chats in his castle in Cannes, Picasso tells him stories he knew in his childhood, such as the three deaths of singer Juan Breva, and the fact is that the press erroneously reported his death on two occasions, which finally occurred in 1918.
They also killed La Trini prematurely, “a woman who marked cante por malagueñas and who sang things that had a lot to do with her life experience as a battered woman”, points out Mármol.
Another character that appears through these Picassian secrets is La Cuenca, a bailaora who had performed and triumphed in New York, Havana or Mexico City.
“What she danced was proto-flamenco, and she did it dressed as a bullfighter. It is a thread to continue investigating, because she could have been the first transformist or transsexual in the world of entertainment, ”says the author of the book.
Work with Diaghilev
In the curiosities section, it is recalled how Picasso worked with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and also designed the sets for a flamenco show “for which he gathered a group of artists who he recruited mainly in Seville.”
One of them was the dancer Félix Fernández, later known as Félix el Loco, who, when the company was in London and knowing that he would not be the star of the show, went to a London church angrily and danced naked on the altar, which that took him to an English asylum until the end of his days.
For his part, the bailaor Pepito Vargas threw away the drawing that Picasso had made for him because he had not known how to paint his eyes well, and the man from Malaga also enjoyed the art of Antonio Gades or Antonio el Bailarín.
“Although the book is fictional, I wanted to claim that, despite all that has been speculated about what Picasso thought and wanted, it is very likely that he was in love with the music of his land, simply because of the guitars he drew , because no artist of his time has drawn so many”, highlights Mármol.
And he adds that “there are people who testify that they enjoyed watching the flamencos dance, because they reminded them of their land”.
lafont’s illustrations
The texts by Francis Mármol are accompanied by illustrations by the Argentine artist Emmanuel Lafont, who has taken the episodes that he recounted to him “in his field”.
“I proposed it to Emmanuel because I wanted someone who was not in the official line on Picasso to do it. It is as if Picasso himself had done it, that if he had had to illustrate something he would have taken his own path ”.
The last jewel that the book includes is a QR code as an epilogue to each chapter that allows you to listen to original recordings of songs from the beginning of the 20th century, by artists such as Paca Aguilera, La Antequerana, El Cojo de Málaga or La Rubia, and that show “ how flamenco has evolved”. EFE