A kiss from Picasso turned Flamenco legend on to painting
Their paths crossed for a matter of moments half a century ago -- a kiss and a compliment; not long enough to form a friendship with Pablo Picasso, enough to convince flamenco dancer Micaela Flores Amaya she could double as an artist.
"We met briefly in France more than 50 years ago. He had one of my pictures. I gave him some ham and he gave me a kiss," laughed Amaya, better known by her stage name La Chunga, which loosely translates as a tough woman to cross.
On Wednesday Madrid's renowned El Corral de la Moreria flamenco unveiled a series of paintings by the 69-year-old La Chunga, whose artistic style even as a young woman fascinated Picasso.
"How can it be possible that a gypsy girl without studies expresses such sensitivity and colour in her paintings?" an astounded Picasso asked when they met in France in the mid-1950s.
La Chunga, born to Andalusian gypsy immigrant parents in the southern French city of Marseille in 1938, moved to Barcelona as a toddler and became a talented dancer in her childhood.
Yet her meeting with the cubist maestro, who adopted France as his home but was Spanish by birth, encouraged her to add a further string to her bow.
"If I'd known then what I know now I'd have said 'make me a sketch or something,'" said La Chunga wistfully, perhaps mindful of missing out on what would these days have brought a windfall.
But the meeting was brief.
"He just said: 'How can such colours and pictures come from a gypsy woman who has had no training?'" La Chunga told AFP as she waved a hand towards her work, whose style Picasso dubbed "shining naïf."
These days, dancing has had to take a back seat as age has begun to catch up with the dancer whom Ava Gardner discovered on a visit to El Corral in the late 1950s.
Gardner promptly encouraged her to carve out an acting career and that contact, as well as some prodding from flamenco impresario Pastora Imperio, brought her a small share of the limelight across the Atlantic.
But it was dancing which remained her first love.
Madrid's Fine Arts Circle awarded her its gold medal for artistic achievement as La Chunga's flamenco fame spread with tours of the United States, then Mexico before she returned to Spain in late 1958 before further tours from France to Japan via Australia.
"I was dancing from about the age of eight. But I don't dance much any more so nowadays, when I get a bit bored at home, I start to paint!" she told AFP.
The pictures are highly stylised, showing swarthy women with jet black hair clad in bright dresses, often with flamenco shawls, against a backdrop of flowers.
"Basically, they show me, my face, happiness and sadness," explained La Chunga, who won warm praise from her friend of more than 50 years and fellow flamenco doyenne Blanca Del Rey, whose son Juan Manuel is El Corral director.
"Her paintings feel real. She leads me towards artistic truth, which for me is an artistic necessity," Blanca Del Rey enthused.
El Corral, which last year celebrated 50 years as one of Spain's most famous flamenco venues -- celebrity visitors over the half century included John F. Kennedy and Che Guevara as well as Picasso and Dali -- who once tried to visit with a panther in tow -- will show La Chunga's collection until April 20.
