Frida Kahlo at Philadelphia Museum of Art on artrepublic.com
Exhibition running from Feb 20 2008
until May 18 2008
Frida Kahlo examines the art of one of the most influential artists of the last 50 years. The exhibition includes 42 of the Mexican artist’s self-portraits, portraits, allegorical and symbolic paintings and still lifes, among them paintings that have never been exhibited before and others that will be seen in the U.S. for the first time. The exhibition is drawn from more than 30 collections in the U.S., Mexico, France, and Japan. Two of the most important and extensive collections of Kahlo’s work – the Museo Dolores Olmedo in Mexico City and the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of Modern and Contemporary Mexican Art, Cuernavaca – have lent many of their most treasured Kahlo paintings. The exhibition is organized by Walker Art Center in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Generally small in scale, Kahlo’s distinctive, jewel-like works are vividly detailed compositions often filled with powerful personal symbolism. In her iconic self-portraits the artist assumes multiple identities and reflects upon pivotal periods in her life, painting painful and often difficult subject matter, including Henry Ford Hospital (1932), an unprecedented depiction of a miscarriage she suffered. In The Broken Column (1944) the artist shows herself standing in tears in a vacant landscape after surgery, her injured spine an exposed crumbling column, with nails piercing her body in a manner that recalls the martyred Saint Sebastian. Some paintings reflect the artist’s notable wit. In Self-Portrait on the Borderline between Mexico and the United States (1932), which Kahlo painted during an unhappy period in Detroit, she wears a long pink dress and lace gloves – proper attire for an American society woman at the time – but she also subversively holds a cigarette and a Mexican flag, evidence of her resistance to accepted codes of conduct in the U.S. and her allegiance to her native homeland. Other highlights include two works that have never been exhibited in public before: Me and My Parrots (1941) and Magnolias (1945). Other iconic pictures, The Two Fridas (1939) and Diego and Frida 1929-1944 (1944) have not been exhibited before in the U.S. In addition to the self-portraits and portraits, the exhibition includes Kahlo’s animated and often autobiographical still lifes. In Still Life with Parrot and Fruit (1951), Kahlo shows fruit cut open, a possible reference to the surgeries she endured throughout her life. The abundance of native fruits and flowers in these paintings also reflects her passionate embrace of Mexicanidád—a revaluing of indigenous culture and an ethos shared by many artists, writers, and musicians in the years following the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). An avid student of the history of art, Kahlo drew from many sources, including Italian Renaissance and German Neue Sachlichkeit painting, and a range of Mexican art. Still Life (1951), which includes a Colima clay Xoloitzcuintli dog vessel and My Nurse and I (1937), in which the nurse’s face is fused with a Teotihuacan stone mask, exemplify Kahlo’s deep interest in and knowledge of pre-Colombian art. Paintings such as The Suicide of Dorothy Hale (1939) are based on Mexican ex-voto paintings, which are devoted to saints and typically rendered on metal with written inscriptions. In Frieda and Diego Rivera (1931) Kahlo announces her marriage to the famous Mexican muralist in a ribbon over her head, a feature borrowed from colonial painting. Kahlo painted Portrait of Dr. Leo Eloesser (1931) in a style that recalls 19th-century Mexican portraiture by such artists as José María Estrada, whom she greatly admired, in addition to paintings by German modern artists such as Christian Schad. Complementing the paintings in Frida Kahlo are 118 photographs from Kahlo’s personal collection. They include images by preeminent photographers such as Carl Van Vechten, Gisèle Freund, Tina Modotti, and Nickolas Muray, as well as by the artist’s father, Guillermo Kahlo, a professional photographer who was instrumental in his daughter’s career. Included are personal images of Kahlo with her husband, as well as family and friends, among them such cultural and political figures as Leon Trotsky and Surrealist André Breton. Kahlo inscribed many of the photographs with dedications, effaced others with self-deprecating marks, and even kisses, leaving a lipstick trace. Juxtaposed with her powerful self-portraits, these photographs give heightened immediacy to her life, her home and studio, her husband and friends, and contribute to reflect on the ways in which the artist manipulated her own image and reinvented herself throughout her life. OPENING HOURS: Tue - Sun: 10.00 - 17.00 Fri: 10.00 - 20.45 Image Captions: Image 1: Frida Kahlo, The Frame, c. 1937–38, 11-1/4 x 8-1/8 inches. (Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musée national d’art moderne/Centre de création industrielle). © 2007 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av. Cinco de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc, 06059, México D.F. Image 2: Frida Kahlo, My Grandparents, My Parents, and I (Family Tree)/Mis abuelos, mis padres, y yo (árbol genealógico), 1936. Oil and tempera on metal, 12-1/8 x 13-5/8 inches. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Allan Roos, M.D., and B. Mathieu Roos digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY © 2007 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av. Cinco de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059, México, D.F Image 3: Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird/Autorretrato con collar de espinas y colibrí, 1940, 24-1/2 x 19 inches. (Nickolas Muray Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin) © 2007 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av. Cinco de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc, 06059, México D.F. Image 4: Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Frida Kahlo, Coyoacan, circa 1938 Vicente Wolf Photography Collection © Manuel Alvarez Bravo  |
