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Frida Kahlo in her garden at Coyoacán, 1952 , Photograph : Berenice Kolko, © Banco de México. Fideicomiso Museos Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo. |
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Frida Kahlo, El camión (The Bus), 1929, © Colección Museo Dolores Olmedo, Xochimilco, México. |
The Role of Struggle in Frida Kahlo's Brilliance of Achievement |
Frida Kahlo, Unos cuantos piquetitos (A Few Small Nips), 1935, © Colección Museo Dolores Olmedo, Xochimilco, México.
Frida Kahlo, Mi nana y yo (My nurse and I), 1937, © Colección Museo Dolores Olmedo, Xochimilco, México.
Frida Kahlo painting the portrait of her father, 1951, Photograph : Gisèle Freund © Banco de México. Fideicomiso Museos Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo.
Frida Kahlo, La columna rota (The Broken Column), 1944, Oil on masonite, 39.8 x 30.5 cm, © Collection Museo Dolores Olmedo, Xochimilco, México.
Frida Kahlo, Retrato de Luther Burbank (Portrait of Luther Burbank), 1932, © Colección Museo Dolores Olmedo, Xochimilco, México. |
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Centre for Fine Arts By XAVIER FLAMENT Frida Kahlo’s disconcerting gaze stares out from the Museo Olmedo collection, the world’s largest (private) collection of her work. 19 paintings, an etching, six drawings, and a number of photographs bear witness to her brilliant contribution to the symbolist and surrealist movements. And to her life, a hard one from the outset. A tragic bus accident at just 17 led to a series of operations throughout her life, at a time when medicine was just feeling its way. Several miscarriages and a turbulent married life with Diego Rivera, the great painter of the Revolution, contributed to her works’ power and extraordinary beauty. The exhibition is organised in the framework of the Mexico Festival. Mexico celebrates a double anniversary in 2010: 200 years of independence and 100 years of revolution. On this occasion, the Centre for Fine Arts presents a large festival with art, theatre, dance, film, music … from Mexico. Frida's unfathomable gaze They present a summary of her artistic career, from one of her earliest paintings, the Portrait of Alicia Galante (1927), with its alabaster features that one might take to be the work of Modigliani, to the emblematic Self-portrait with Monkey (1945). From the freshness of a newly-discovered talent — Diego Rivera straight away recognised "a vital sensuality further enriched by a pitiless, though sensitive, power of observation" — to the brusque expression of a hypersensitive sincerity. Frida, in traditional costume, seems here to belong to the animal kingdom that surrounds her, the little monkey that Diego gave her embracing her with his paws alongside the xoloitzcuintle, the hairless dog that is emblematic of Mexico's Nahuatl past, and a hunched pagan idol. And always that piercing gaze turned towards the spectator, feigning indifference. Frida Kahlo kept herself under constant observation, ever since the tragic bus accident in 1925 that left her — with a broken spine, pelvis, and ribs — bedridden in a corset. A tragedy that underlay her painting and was a recurring theme in her works, as in the terrible Broken Column of 1944. For nine months, a mirror placed over her bed reflected back the image of her own suffering. She seems to have learned much from her father, a German immigrant who was a professional photographer and who passed on to her his sense of composition and skill in retouching. Some have also seen in all this the obsessive expression of a narcissism permanently wounded by a mother — of mixed race, herself a painter with links to the surrealist movement — who rejected her at an early age. My Nurse and I (1937) offers a terrifying vision of this: we see Frida Kahlo, with a fixed stare and the body of a baby, in the arms of a nurse with skin like volcanic rock and the face of an idol. Drops of mother's milk stand out on her voluptuous breasts, but do not penetrate the artist's inert lips. At the bottom of the painting is a scroll for a message like those of the ex-votos that appear on a wall of her Casa Azul (Blue House) in Coyoacán, but no prayer is written on it. It is as if it were Without Hope— the title, in fact, of another painting from 1945, in which she weeps, confined to bed, a funnel in her mouth through which are being stuffed a number of dead animals, fish, etc. In a recent work the psychoanalyst Salomon Grimberg has a field day with this theme, bringing together previously unpublished confessions made by the artist to her psychologist friend Olga Campos and a psychological evaluation of her carried out in 1950. Tests of Frida Kahlo's personality, he observes, suggest dysthymia (chronic agitation) with, overlaid, recurrent bouts of severe depression and of chronic pain syndrome and with major and profound damage in a narcissistic personality. The struggle within her, he believes, between her sense of greatness and her lack of self-esteem, had the effect of seriously weakening her, so that she became increasingly dependent on others to try to shore up that wavering self-esteem. In Grimberg's opinion, this struggle, from which she could only have found a way out by tackling it from inside, never came to an end. Despite the wealth of her interior world and of that around her, Kahlo, he believes, lived without coming to terms with her extreme dependence, condemned to see others as untrustworthy, just as she judged herself to be incomplete. Be that as it may, the extraordinary power of the work resists interpretative patterns of all kinds, whether those of in-depth psychology or those based on the various events that bruised her throughout her life. Diego's infidelities, including with Frida's own sister, her miscarriages, her terrifying operations, her various affairs (including one with Trotsky), and her liberated sexuality all lend themselves, it is true, to conjecture. In The Circle a woman's body is disintegrating; Henry Ford Hospital and Frida and the Abortion (1932) clinically present her inability to have children. In one work, the end of Diego's love shows through in the background in those cold Detroit factories where the famous muralist worked to commission; in the other, her creative talent seems to substitute for the dead foetus in the form of a third arm that ends in a womb-shaped palette. Her yearning for motherhood is equally present in the opulent forms of the mixed-race Eva Frederick and in the empathic gaze of Doña Rosita Morillo, her patron's mother. But her work is not that easily penetrated. With its brightly-coloured brushstrokes, it resists – as did the artist herself when André Breton wanted to number her among the surrealists. "Those artistic imbeciles in Paris," she remarked. "They took me for a surrealist. It's not true. I have never painted a dream. What I depicted was my reality." The Mask (1945), finally, refers all commentators to the unfathomable ambiguity of the human condition. And of Frida, the artist. Her last words: "I hope the exit will be joyful … and I hope never to return"; her last painting: Viva la vida.
Frida Kahlo, Autorretrato con changuito (Self-Portrait with Small Monkey), 1945, © Collection Museo Dolores Olmedo, Xochimilco, México. |
Frida Kahlo, Frida y el aborto (Frida and the Abortion), 1932, © Colección Museo Dolores Olmedo, Xochimilco, México. |
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Photographer unknown, Frida on a boat, Xochimilco, Mexico City, n.d.; Vicente Wolf Photography Collection. |
Intimations of how Frida Kahlo Perceived Herself from a Lifetime of Work |
Frida Kahlo, Still Life with Parrot and Fruit (Naturaleza muerta con loro y frutas), Detail, 1951; oil on canvas; 9-7/8 x 11-1/16", Nikolas Muray Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, © 2007 Banco de México, Trustee of the Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av. Cinco de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059, México, D.F.
Frida Kahlo, My Grandparents, My Parents, and I (Family Tree) [Mis abuelos, mis padres, y yo (árbol genealógico)], 1936; Collection The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Gift of Allan Roos, M.D., and B. Mathieu Roos, 1976 digital image; © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY; © 2008 Banco de México, Trustee of the Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av. Cinco de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059, México, D.F.
Frida Kahlo, Portrait of Doña Rosita Morillo (Retrato de Doña Rosita Morillo), 1944, oil on Masonite; 30-1/16 x 24"
Frida Kahlo, The Broken Column (La columna rota), 1944; oil on Masonite, 15-11/16 x 12-1/16", Collection Museo Dolores Olmedo, Xochimilco, Mexico City, © 2007 Banco de México,Trustee of the Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av. Cinco de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059, México, D.F. |
San Francisco While concentrating on Kahlo's hauntingly seductive and often brutal self-portraits, the exhibition also will include those particular portraits and still-life paintings that amplify her sense of identity. The peculiar tension between the intimacy of Kahlo's subject matter and the reserve of her public persona gives her self-portraits the impact of icons. As her practice progressed, her images grew in confidence and complexity, reflecting her private obsessions and political concerns. Kahlo struggled to gain visibility and recognition both as a woman and an artist, and she was a central player in the political and artistic revolutions occurring throughout the world. The exhibition also features photographs that once belonged to Kahlo and Diego Rivera from the Vicente Wolf Photography Collection, many of which have never before been published or exhibited. Emblematic images of Kahlo and Rivera by preeminent photographers of the period (Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Lola Alvarez Bravo, Gisele Freund, Tina Modotti, Nickolas Muray) will be on view alongside never-before-seen personal snapshots of the artist with family and friends, including such cultural and political luminaries as André Breton and Leon Trotsky. These photographs — several of which Kahlo hand-inscribed with dedications; effaced with self-deprecating marks; and kissed, leaving a trace of lipstick — pose fascinating questions about an artist who was both the consummate manufacturer of her own image and a beguiling and willing photographic subject. During her lifetime, Kahlo was best known as the flamboyant wife of renowned muralist Rivera. Today she has become one of the most celebrated and revered artists in the world. Between 1926, when she began to paint while recuperating from a near-fatal bus accident, and 1954, when she died at age 47, Kahlo painted some 66 self-portraits and about 80 paintings of other subjects, mostly still lifes and portraits of friends. "I paint my own reality," she said. "The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to." Her reality and her need to explore and confirm it by depicting her own image have given us some of the most powerful and original images of the 20th century. Paradoxically, her work allowed her to both express and continually fabricate her own subjectivity. Kahlo was born in 1907 in Coyoacan, then a southern suburb of Mexico City. Three years after the 1925 bus accident, she showed her paintings to Rivera. He admired the paintings, and the painter, and a year later they married. Theirs was a tumultuous relationship: Rivera once declared himself to be "unfit for fidelity," and Kahlo largely withstood his promiscuity. As if to assuage her pain, Kahlo recorded the vicissitudes of her marriage in paint. She also recorded the misery of her deteriorating health ? the orthopedic corsets she was forced to wear, the numerous spinal surgeries, plus a number of miscarriages and therapeutic abortions. Her painful subject matter is distanced by an intentional primitivism, as well as by the canvases — small scale. Kahlo's sometimes-grueling imagery is also mitigated by her sardonic humor and extraordinary imagination. Her sense of fantasy, fed by Mexican popular art and pre-Columbian culture, was noted by surrealist poet and essayist Breton when he came to Mexico in 1938 and claimed Kahlo for Surrealism. She rejected the designation but clearly understood that doors would open under the surrealist label — and they did: Breton helped secure exhibitions for her in New York in 1938 and Paris in 1939. Soon after Kahlo returned from attending her Paris show, Rivera asked her for a divorce. They remarried a year later. In the second half of the 1940s Kahlo's health worsened; she was hospitalized for a year between 1950 and 1951, and in 1953 her right leg was amputated at the knee due to gangrene. Her insistence on being strong and joyful in the face of pain sustained her, however; she drew a picture of her severed limb in her journal and wrote, "Feet, what do I need them for if I have wings to fly?" Kahlo had her first exhibition in Mexico in 1953. Defying doctor's orders, she attended the opening and received guests while reclining on her own four-poster bed. Because she could not sit up for long and she suffered severe effects from prescribed painkillers, her paintings in the period from 1952 to 1954 lost the jewel-like refinement of her earlier works. Her late still lifes and self-portraits — many of which proclaim Kahlo's allegiance to Communist doctrine — testify to her passion for life and her indomitable will, however. Frida Kahlo brings together works such as Henry Ford Hospital (1932), depicting the artist's miscarriage in Detroit (a first in terms of the iconography of Western art history), and The Broken Column (1944), painted after she underwent spinal surgery. It also includes self-portraits such as Me and My Doll (1937) and Self-Portrait with Monkeys (1943), both of which explore the theme of childlessness. The artist's suffering over Rivera's betrayals is reflected in paintings like her masterful double-portrait The Two Fridas (1939); created during her separation and divorce from Rivera, the work presents a powerful depiction of pain inflicted by love and Kahlo's divided sense of self. Collectively, these images suggest the extent to which, for Kahlo, painting served as catharsis, as well as an opportunity to redefine and critique modern bourgeois society. Collectors of Kahlo's work can be found around the world — the paintings in the exhibition come from some 30 private and institutional collections in France, Japan, Mexico, and the United States. Several paintings have never before been on public view in the United States. Two of the most important and extensive collections of Kahlo's work — the Museo Dolores Olmedo Patio Collection in Mexico City and the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of Modern and Contemporary Mexican Art, currently housed in the Centro Cultural Muros in Cuernavaca — have loaned some of their most treasured Kahlo paintings to the exhibition. The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated 304-page catalogue featuring more than 100 color plates, as well as critical essays by Herrera, exhibition co-curator Elizabeth Carpenter, and Latin American art curator and critic Victor Zamudio-Taylor. A separate plate section is devoted to works from the Vicente Wolf Photography Collection. The catalogue also includes an extensive illustrated timeline of relevant socio-political world events, artistic and cultural developments, and significant personal experiences that took place during Kahlo's lifetime, along with a selected bibliography, exhibition history, and index. Frida Kahlo is organized by Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in association with San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition is guest-curated by world-renowned Frida Kahlo biographer and art historian Hayden Herrera with co-curator Elizabeth Carpenter of Walker Art Center and includes approximately 50 paintings from the beginning of Kahlo's career in 1926 to her death in 1954. |
Frida Kahlo, Henry Ford Hospital, 1932; oil on metal; 12-13/16 x 15-13/16", Collection Museo Dolores Olmedo, Xochilmilco, Mexico City, © 2007 Banco de México, Trustee of the Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av. Cinco de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059, México, D.F. |
Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, detail, 1939, Oil on canvas, 67 x 67", Collection of the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City. |
An Artist/Icon of the Americas, Her Practice Built on Self-Examination |
Frida Kahlo, Self Portrait, 1930, oil on canvas 26 x 22", Private Collection © 2007 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av., Cinco de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059, México, D.F.
Frida Kahlo, Frida and Diego Rivera, 1931, Oil on canvas 39-3/8 x 31", San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Albert M. Bender Collection, Gift of Albert M. Bender, © 2007 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av., Cinco de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059, México, D.F.
Frida Kahlo, Me and My Parrots (Yo y mis pericos), detail, 1941, Oil on canvas 32 x 24-1/2", Private Collection, © 2007 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av., Cinco de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059, México, D.F. |
Walker Art Center Few artists have captured the public’s imagination with the force of Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of this Mexican artist and to recognize her powerful influence on artists working today, the Walker Art Center (in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) has organized an exhibition of Kahlo’s paintings to premiere in Minneapolis before beginning a U.S. tour. Curated by art historian and world-renowned Kahlo biographer Hayden Herrera and Walker associate curator Elizabeth Carpenter, the presentation include sapproximately 50 paintings from the beginning of Kahlo’s career in 1926 to the year of her death in 1954. Following its showing at the Walker, Frida Kahlo will travel to Philadelphia and San Francisco. While concentrating on Kahlo’s hauntingly seductive and often brutal self-portraits, the exhibition will also include those particular portraits and still life paintings that amplify her own sense of identity. The peculiar tension between the intimacy of Kahlo’s subject matter and her insistence on a mask of reserve give Kahlo’s self-portraits the impact of icons. As the artist’s practice progressed, her images grew in confidence and complexity, reflecting both her private obsessions and political concerns. While struggling to gain visibility and recognition both as a woman and an artist, Kahlo was a central player in both the political and artistic revolutions occurring throughout the world. A small gallery off the main exhibition space will feature selections from the Vicente Wolf Collection. Emblematic images of Kahlo and Diego Rivera by preeminent photographers of the period (Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Lola Alvarez Bravo, Gisele Freund, Tina Modotti, Nickolas Muray) will be on view alongside personal snapshots of the artist with family and friends, including such cultural and political luminaries as André Breton and Leon Trotsky. Many have never before been published or exhibited. These photographs — several of which Kahlo hand-inscribed with dedications, effaced with self-deprecating marks, and kissed leaving a lipstick trace — pose fascinating questions about an artist who was both the consummate manufacturer of her own image and a beguiling and willing photographic subject. During her lifetime, Frida Kahlo was best known as the flamboyant wife of the celebrated muralist Diego Rivera. Today she has become one of the most celebrated and revered artists in the world. Between 1926, when she began to paint while recuperating from a near-fatal bus accident, and 1954, when she died at the age of 47, Kahlo painted some 66 self-portraits and about 80 paintings of other subjects, mostly still lifes and portraits of friends. “I paint my own reality,” she said. “The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to.” Her reality and her need to explore and confirm it by depicting her own image have given us some of the most powerful and original images of the 20th century. Paradoxically, her work allowed her to both express and continually fabricate her own subjectivity. Frida Kahlo was born in 1907 in Coyoacán, then a southern suburb of Mexico City. Three years after the 1925 bus accident, she showed her paintings to Rivera. He admired the paintings and the painter and a year later they married. Theirs was a tumultuous relationship: Rivera once declared himself to be “unfit for fidelity,” and Kahlo largely withstood his promiscuity. As if to assuage her pain, Kahlo recorded the vicissitudes of her marriage in paint. She also recorded the misery of her deteriorating health — the orthopedic corsets that she was forced to wear, the numerous spinal surgeries, plus a number of miscarriages and therapeutic abortions. Her painful subject matter is distanced by an intentional primitivism, as well as by small scale. Kahlo’s sometimes grueling imagery is also mitigated by her sardonic humor and her extraordinary imagination. Her fantasy, fed by Mexican popular art and by pre-Columbian culture, was noted by the Surrealist poet and essayist André Breton when he came to Mexico in 1938 and claimed Frida for Surrealism. Kahlo rejected the designation, but clearly understood that under the Surrealist label, doors would open — Breton helped secure exhibitions in New York in 1938 and in Paris in 1939. Soon after Kahlo returned from attending her Paris show, Rivera asked her for a divorce. They remarried a year later. In the second half of the 1940s her health worsened. Kahlo was hospitalized for a year between 1950 and 1951 and in 1953 her right leg was amputated at the knee due to gangrene. But her insistence on being strong and joyful in the face of pain sustained her, and in her journal she drew her severed limb and wrote “Feet, what do I need them for if I have wings to fly?” She was given her first exhibition in Mexico in 1953. Defying doctor’s orders, Kahlo attended the opening and received guests while reclining on her own four-poster bed. Because she could not sit up for long and the potent effects of the painkillers she was prescribed, her paintings from 1952 to 1954 lack the jewel-like refinement of her earlier works. Yet her late still lifes and self-portraits — many of them proclaiming Kahlo’s allegiance to the Communist faith — are testimony to her passion for life and her indomitable will. Frida Kahlo brings together works such as Henry Ford Hospital (1932), depicting her miscarriage in Detroit (a first in terms of the iconography of Western art history), and The Broken Column (1944), painted after undergoing spinal surgery. It also will include self-portraits such as Me and My Doll (1937) and Self-Portrait with Monkeys (1943), both exploring the theme of childlessness. On view will be paintings that deal with her suffering over Rivera’s betrayals, including the artist’s undisputed masterpiece The Two Fridas (1939). Created during her separation and divorce from him, this magnificent double self-portrait is a powerful image of pain inflicted by love and an expression of Kahlo’s divided sense of self. Collectively these images suggest the extent to which, for Kahlo, painting served as both catharsis and an opportunity to redefine and critique modern bourgeois society. |
Frida Kahlo, Henry Ford Hospital, detail, 1932, Oil on metal 12-13/16 x 15-13/16", Unframed, Collection Museo Dolores Olmedo Patiño, Mexico City, © 2007 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av., Cinco de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059, México, D.F. |
