The fullness with which Kahlo lived her life is seen best here, and her love for rich experience is reflected back at the reader, full of personality and vitality
When Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) died in 1954, her husband Diego Rivera asked the poet Carlos Pellicer to turn her family home, the fabled Blue House, into a museum. Pellicer selected some paintings, drawings, photographs, books and ceramics, maintaining the space just as Kahlo and Rivera had arranged it to live and work in. The rest of the objects, clothing, documents, drawings and letters, as well as over 6,000 photographs collected by Kahlo over the course of her life, were put away in bathrooms that had been converted into storerooms. This incredible trove remained hidden for more than half a century, until, just a few years ago, these storerooms and wardrobes were opened up. Kahlo's photograph collection was a major revelation among these finds, a testimony to the tastes and interests of the famous couple, not only through the images themselves but also through the telling annotations inscribed upon them. Frida Kahlo: Her Photos allows us to speculate about Kahlo's and Rivera's likes and dislikes, and to document their family origins; it supplies a thrilling and hugely significant addition to our knowledge of Kahlo's life and work.The iconic Mexican painter as seen through almost 300 archival items, from her wardrobe to her personal art collection
This compendium presents the rich diversity of themes, ideas, concepts and emotions generated around two fundamental, iconic figures of modern Mexico: painter Frida Kahlo and her husband, muralist Diego Rivera.
More than 300 images from the archives of the Museo Frida Kahlo in Mexico City offer readers a glimpse of Kahlo's distinctive wardrobe and the impressive collections of popular and pre-Hispanic art she assembled with Rivera, her connection with photography and the history of La casa azul, her beloved blue home that now serves as the museum's main building. This volume welcomes us into Frida Kahlo's universe, exploring the legacy of an indispensable figure in the world of 20th-century art and culture in her native Mexico and across the globe.
Frida Kahlo (1907-54) began painting at the age of 18 when she was immobilized for several months as a result of a bus crash that left her permanently disabled. From then on, art served as an immense source of healing for Kahlo as well as a vehicle for self-expression and cultural exploration. At the heart of Kahlo's practice was her love for Mexican folk tradition, her staunch communist beliefs and her complex relationship with her body, gender and sexuality. A lifelong activist, Kahlo died of a pulmonary embolism after participating in a demonstration against the CIA's invasion of Guatemala.
How Kahlo collected, celebrated and depicted Mexican folk arts in both her painting and her persona
The visionary and supremely self-fashioning artist Frida Kahlo (1907-54) drew inspiration throughout her career from arte popular--painted ceramics, embroidered textiles, religious votives, effigies and children's toys, and other objects created in Mexico's rural and Indigenous communities. The hundreds of folk-art objects that filled her home and studio attest to her nationalist politics and her fascination with the work of carvers, weavers, sculptors of papier-mâché and vernacular painters. She depicted these objects in her paintings and adopted elements of traditional dress and ornament in her own self-presentation, playing on modernist fascination with folk culture and on her own relation to layered Mexican identity.
This bilingual book, the first in-depth exploration of Kahlo's varied and sophisticated responses to arte popular, situates her within the broad artistic and intellectual movements of her time, examines her professional ambitions and illuminates the innovative techniques she used in her lifelong encounter, both playful and powerful, with the folk art of Mexico.
Kahlo's iconic gender-bending self portrait
Neutral hues, an ill-fitting man's suit and wiggling locks of cut hair supplant Frida Kahlo's (1907-54) usual lively color palette, indigenous Mexican dress and long plaits in Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair (1940). Nevertheless, the painting remains unmistakably Kahlo's. In the wake of a divorce from artist Diego Rivera, Kahlo turns to her favorite genre, self-portraiture, to express her deepest emotional and psychological urges. Inscribed with the lyrics of a popular song that translate as Look, if I loved you it was for your hair. Now that you're without it I no longer love you, the work oscillates between evocations of a popular culture shared by many and unflinching forays into the private sphere. Curator Jodi Roberts' essay, too, moves between the public and the private as it situates Kahlo's painting in the context of the Mexican Revolution's legacy, the Surrealist tradition and the artist's own life to explore the ways in which Kahlo constructed and reconstructed her own identity.
Children will be encouraged to explore their own imaginary worlds, open up conversations, and build on their own creativity.
El universo Frida Kahlo, coeditado por Editorial RM y el Museo Frida Kahlo, permite refrescar y actualizar la rica diversidad de temas, ideas, conceptos y emociones generados entorno a dos figuras icónicas y fundamentales en el México moderno: Frida Kahlo y Diego Rivera. Esta edición recoge un abanico de ensayos escritos por especialistas en los diversos campos que envuelven a la figura de Frida Kahlo. Aproximaciones, al fin, a las condiciones materiales que marcaban su día a día y sus creaciones. Además, las casi trescientas imágenes de los archivos del Museo Frida Kahlo incluidas en este volumen permiten entrever el armario de Frida, la Casa Azul y su conexión con la fotografía. Este volumen nos da la bienvenida al universo de Frida Kahlo a través de la exploración del legado de esta figura indispensable de la cultura y arte del siglo XX.
Frida Kahlo: Her Universe, published under a joint imprint by Editorial RM and Museo Frida Kahlo, allows us to refresh and bring up to date the rich diversity of themes, ideas, concepts, and emotions generated around two fundamental and iconic figures in modern Mexico: Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. This edition gathers a range of essays by specialists on the various subjects that surround the figure of Frida Kahlo. Approximations to the material circumstances that surrounded her day to day and her creations. In addition, almost three hundred images from the archives of Museo Frida Kahlo offer readers a glimpse of Frida's wardrobe, the collections of popular and preHispanic she assembled alongside Diego Rivera, the Blue House, her connection with photography, and other matters. This volume welcomes us into Frida Kahlo's universe, exploring the legacy of an indispensable figure.in the world of twentieth-century art and culture.