Lola Flores Exhibition | Lola Flores in the library: an exhibition from the National Library covers her life and legacy

2023-06-22 19:41:12

the immortal Lola Flores she did practically everything in her long artistic career as a dancer and singer (1923-1995). From sing on a table from her father’s tavern when she was a girl in Jerez to films that broke the box office along with his artistic partner during the postwar period, Manolo Caracol. He played a soccer game that pitted folkloric y finolis in the No-Do years, ads for paint brands and even an ad with the voice of his daughter Lolita after she died.

A few months ago, in Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz), his hometown, his museum, a interpretation Center 300 square meters and two floors located in the city’s Nave del Aceite and inaugurated this spring. And after the summer, in September, Lola Flores will also be in the library. Specifically, in the National Library (BNE). The documentary center has presented an exhibition, curated by Alberto Romero Ferrer, Professor of Philology at the University of Cádiz and one of the researchers who has worked the most on the trajectory and figure of the guinea fowland María Jesús López Lorenzo, head of the Sound Records Service of the BNE’s Department of Music and Audiovisuals.

The exposure of the National Librarywhich aims to offer an “innovative tour of the career of this unique flamenco”, according to the note from the entity itself, will review the different artistic stages that Lola Flores lived “that run parallel to the contemporary history of Spain itself and that remains reflected in the institution’s documents (sound recordings, video recordings, scores, photographs, magazines, books…)”.

The trajectory of Lola Flores in five stages

The exhibition will have five sections. The first will be dedicated to the roots of this singular artist: from her birth to the Civil War, a period known to flamenco as the silver age because this art experienced a strong heyday, thanks mainly to the interest of artists and intellectuals such as the poet Federico García Lorca, Argentina, La Argentinita or Pastora Imperio.

Rosario Flores and Lolita, daughters of Lola Flores, at the presentation of the documentary series that Ismael del Santo has directed about her life and in which, among others, Professor Alberto Romero Ferrer, one of the curators of the exhibition on the artist who in September can be visited at the National Library. RAÚL TERREL / EP

The second, which chronologically will occupy the postwar period, focuses on the artistic couple he formed with Manolo Caracol and the great success that both experienced on stage. A period that started in 1943 thanks to the fact that Flores managed to obtain a large economic sum with which he promoted the creation of the show Zambra 1944was such a success that it filled theaters for eight uninterrupted years (they kept changing the year in the title) at the same time that the romance between the two protagonistsa wild relationship that would continue until in 1951 when she decided to break off and start a new stage, becoming the star she would be from then on.

After this stage, the exhibition recounts his enthronement as an international film star, which begins when in 1951 he seizes a professional opportunity to cause the definitive break with Manolo Caracol: the businessman Cesáreo González offers him a contract for two years exclusively for six million pesetas to act and record movies in America. “Spain wants to begin to forget the gray calamities of the 40s. These are the years of the guinea fowl“, collects the note from the BNE.

Then, the post-Franco regime with the Transition and democracy, from 75 to 94, a stage in which it was forced to reinvent itself at a time when Spain tried to enter modernity and forget everything that came close to folklore, even handled. satiety for the dictatorship. However, the intelligence of this unique artist will make her become an icon again and be claimed and claimed in different spaces.

Finally, “an open reflection is proposed to the new generations on their meaning, its legacy and its imprint as one of the most resounding voices, also the most absurd and contradictory, of 20th century Spain”.

The entire exhibition is being prepared with documentary funds from the BNE in which, in addition to the documentary materials on the artist herself, it will be offered, “in the key of sentimental memory”, with the voices and opinions of other contemporary artists on the stages covered the sample: Lorca, the Álvarez Quintero, the Machado, Sánchez Mejías, Martín Gaite, Vázquez Montalbán, Caballero Bonald, Umbral, Terenci Moix, Martín Gaite, Tico Medina, Villena, Antonio Burgos, Carlos Herrera or the most contemporary of Cristina Cruces, Israel del Santo, María Peláe, Alaska and Mario, Alejandro Sanz, Miguel Poveda, Estrella Morente or their granddaughters, also artists Elena Furiase and Alba Flores.