Frida Kahlo
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Frida Kahlo Details
Few artists have captured the public's imagination with the force of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. During her lifetime, she was best known as the flamboyant wife of celebrated muralist Diego Rivera. Theirs was a tumultuous relationship: Rivera declared himself to be "unfit for fidelity." 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, the miscarriages and therapeutic abortions. The artist's sometimes harrowing imagery is mitigated by an intentional primitivism and small scale, as well as by her sardonic humor and extraordinary imagination. In celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of Kahlo's birth, this major new monograph is published on the occasion of the 2007-08 traveling exhibition. It features the artist's most renowned work--the hauntingly seductive and often brutal self-portraits--as well as a selection of key portraits and still lifes; more than 100 color plates, from Kahlo's earliest works, made in 1926, to her last, in 1954; critical essays by Elizabeth Carpenter, Hayden Herrera and Victor Zamudio-Taylor; and a selection of photographs of Kahlo and Rivera by preeminent photographers of the period, including Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Lola Alvarez Bravo, Gisele Freund, Tina Modotti and Nickolas Muray. The catalogue also contains snapshots from the artist's own photo albums of Kahlo with family and friends such as André Breton and Leon Trotsky--some of which have never been published, and several of which Kahlo inscribed with dedications, effaced with self-deprecating marks or kissed with a lipstick trace--plus an extensive illustrated timeline, selected bibliography, exhibition history and index.
Reviews
This is the catalogue for the current exhibition at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.It is divided into three essays: the first studies the artist as a Mexican modernist (the aim being to study her art itself, setting aside the myth), the second follows her life through the numerous photographs that were taken of her and which have survived (she was one of the most photographed artists of the XXth century), and the third describes the legacy of the artist (especially interesting is her influence on contemporary artists such as Kiki Smith).The color plates of Kahlo's works (portraits, self-portraits and still-lifes) which form the exhibition are grouped in one section, as well as a private collection of photographs of both herself and Diego Rivera.The book is not as complete as the 2005 Tate catalogue as far as the works illustrated are concerned, but the essays are more thorough and give valuable insights on the artist and her art.