Producer and Artistic Director Theresa Cardenas conducted exhaustive research into this innovative flamenco driven storyline which focuses on the paintings of the Spanish painter Julio Romero de Torres (1874-1930).  In 2004 Cardenas collaborated with award winning flamenco dancer and choreographer Antonio Hidalgo de Paz from Cordoba, Spain to create and produce the original music.  Guitarist Calvin Hazen composed the music, Hidalgo as musical director and Cardenas as its artistic director and producer.

The original script written by Cardenas focuses on the painter’s fascination with his final model Teresa Maria Lopez for his masterpiece, La Chiquita Piconera, (the little coal girl). Through dance, music, poetic Spanish lyrics, and with the backdrop of visual images, El Pintor brings to life his most adored model. It was said that she was a 14 year old maid in the Romero household and that Romero had an attraction for her and spent his last four years of his life painting her simple beauty. During those four years he transforms her simple innocent beauty which he began painting into a woman with sorrowful eyes and an immortal essence. Romero told her if had she not been there he would have not been the painter that he was. He told her “you will be my model forever”.

This Spanish dance drama tells the story in a modernistic lyrical style using traditional flamenco rhythms and classical movements.   Three female dancers all represent La Chiquita Piconera. The dancers represent different moods of the paintings creating scenes that the painter would draw his inspiration from. Themes of love, pain, tragedy and death lead us to his final masterpiece of the young women with an immortal essence.