Picasso was enthralled by the outcast Romani

fine arts / Picasso Romani, harlequin, work ethic
Originally uploaded by trudeau

The Romani are an ethnic group living mostly in Europe, says Wikipedia, who trace their origins to the Indian Subcontinent.

Romani are known in the English-speaking world by the exonym Gypsies (or Gipsies).
They are known collectively in the Romani language as Romane, Roma or Roms.

Their largest concentrated populations in Europe, especially the Roma of Central and Eastern Europe and Anatolia, followed by the Kale of Iberia and Southern France.

There are an estimated one million Roma in the United States; 800,000 in Brazil, whose ancestors were deported by the government of Portugal during the colonial era.

During World War II, the Nazis embarked on a systematic genocide of the Romani.[62] Romanies were marked for extermination and sentenced to forced labor and imprisonment in concentration camps.
They were often killed on sight, especially by the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) on the Eastern Front.[citation needed] The total number of victims has been variously estimated at between 220,000 to 1,500,000; even the lowest number would make the Porajmos one of the largest mass murders in history.

The distinctive sound of Romani music has strongly influenced bolero, jazz, and flamenco (especially cante jondo) in Europe. European-style gypsy jazz is still widely practiced; one who acknowledged this artistic debt was guitarist Django Reinhardt, a Belgian gypsy.