the film academy delivered the Goya of Honor to Marisol in 2020. She did it at a gala held on January 25 of that year in her native Malaga, which, however, was attended by her three daughters to pick it up on her behalf. singer and actress she retired from public life in 1985, and she has never wanted to know anything about cameras, flashes and red carpets.
Years ago, between 1963 and 1973, when she was on the crest of the wave, Cesar Lucas had the opportunity to immortalize her in plenty of snapshots. "He is the photographer who has photographed the actress the most times, starting when she was Marisol and ending when she was Pepa Flores," he explains. Sylvie Imbert, curator of the exhibition 'Marisol: The glow of a myth'.
'Marisol: The glow of a myth', Madrid.
A proposal that she has been planning for twenty years, when she worked as makeup artist and organizer of exhibitions in the Malaga Film Festival. “One day, at the end of the festival, one of the selectors told me why I wasn't going to talk to César Lucas, to try to see with him the possibility to make one exposition about Marisol”, confesses Imbert.
The photographer, who was still on the payroll of Grupo Zeta, received her in her office on O'Donnell Street. “I went to talk to him and he said: ‘An exhibition of mine? Who is going to be interested? He finally agreed: “I told him about the possibility of doing it about Marisol and he invited me to his house. we were looking at drawers and drawers of negatives which are over 50 years old, had to be restored, cleaned and conditioned in order to make a current playback of the photographs”.
From among all those files they chose the 39 photos that finally make up the sample. “I told him: “Look at this one, how wonderful”, and he told me: “This one is not interesting”. He had them so seen that for me he has been very easy to choose the photos, he trusted me for it.”
Once the selection was made, it was necessary to decide where and how to make the exhibition. Sylvie obviously tried it at the Malaga Festival, but she didn't fit in: “She cost me a lot, the festival didn't dare because she wouldn't go, and I insisted because she is a myth that she has a value in herself”.
'Marisol: The glow of a myth', Madrid.
She would thus enter into a process that would take years and years in time: “When they called me from The Thermal to see the possibility of doing it is when I took it up again”. In this way, the exhibition would be inaugurated in the aforementioned cultural center of Malaga in 2019.
But for Madrid things would get complicated: “Then we wanted to bring her here, when we gave the Goya de Honor to Pepa Flores in 2020. We couldn't, because she fell on us one pandemic that stopped our lives to all. It was delayed, it was delayed, and until the Academy reopened, it was not possible to reform the room to be able to put the more photos the better because it wasn't that big.
After so much effort, it seems to the Commissioner "a dream come true" see how it finally materializes. The exhibition 'Marisol: The glow of a myth' opens on Wednesday, June 8 at the headquarters of the film academy (C/ Zurbano, 3). It will remain until July 29, and will be open to the public for free from Monday to Friday, from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.