Lita Cabellut

Lita Cabellut is a Catalan Gitana. Orphaned at an early age, she lived for a time as a homeless person on the streets of her native city in her youth, before being adopted by a Catalan noble family at the age of 13.

As a teenager, the artist visited the Prado in Madrid, where she was particularly impressed by Goya,Velázquez, Murillo and Ribera. The formative influences of these artists, alongside the often harsh experiences of her childhood, can still be felt in her paintings today. At the age of 19, Cabellut left her homeland to study painting at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.

In an interview, she gave as a special reason for her choice that the light in the Netherlands was likein no other country and was a magical revelation for the painter. It was in the Netherlands that she found her pictorial language: on large-format canvases and often in expressive gestures, she depicts people scarred by life - her main concern being to show human greatness, their "grandeur".

Cabellut's subjects are close friends, artistic elective relatives and celebrities, as well as people of the street. Her art is also informed by her involvement with all other types of art: Fashion design, photography, music, literature. The paintings are characterised by a particular drama of light and colour. The rich textures of the pictorial backgrounds and the gestural painting unfold an immediate effect.

For example, in the series of paintings Camarón, presented at the Kai Dikhas Gallery in June 2011, Lita Cabellut dealt with the famous Andalusian flamenco singer Camarón de la Isla (1950-1992). The style-setting musician is revered by countless devotees of this art form for his singing, which transcends the boundaries of traditional flamenco. Through publications such as Como el agua, La leyenda del tiempo or Soy Gitano, he established the music of the Spanish Roma in Spain's majority society. He was and is a political and cultural identification figure for the Spanish Gintanos and achieved the popularity of a pop star. Lita Cabellut captures the passion of Camarón's flamenco in her paintings as well as the hard living conditions of the heroin-addicted musician. Through expressive brushstrokes and at times the dissolution of form, Cabellut expresses Camarón's turmoil and pain, but also his energy - a state known in flamenco.