A Framework for viewing the works of Frida Kahlo

I have visited a number of Frida Kahlo exhibits over the years with the most recent being the Virginia Museum of Fine Art's Frida: Beyond the Myth. One of the highlights of this exhibition was the display of a timeline highlighting the various periods of the artist's life.

I was able to use this construct to develop trees of the artist's work by period, using images captured during visits to said Virginia Museum, Frist Art Museum (Mexican Modernism), Brooklyn Museum (Frida Kahlo: Appearances can be Deceiving); and National Museum of Women in the Arts (Collection). Those trees are displayed in the charts below.

Some observations:

• A significant percentage of the paintings are portraits (13 of 31)
• There are many more drawings in the early portion of her career than later
• There is great consistency in depiction of her facial features in the portraits
• The first still life observed was Magnolias in 1945. She folllowed with a number of substantive works in that genre in later years
• The 1930s and 40s were her most productive years
• Surrealists wanted to claim her as their own and The Love Embrace of the Universe ..., provides ample evidence as to why.

Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism at the Frist Art Museum

I visited the Brooklyn Museum exhibition Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving earlier this year and became an even greater fan of the artist's work as a result. A recent visit to the Frist Museum (Nashville, TN) provided visibility into Kahlo works that I had not seen previously but also allowed me to see the artist within the context of the Mexican Modernism School and the artists plying their trade therein. The Frist exhibition is titled Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism and is drawn from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of Modern Mexican art. The exhibition runs through September 2nd.

The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth
(Mexico), Diego, Me, and Senor Xolotl, 1949
Frida Kahlo

Mexican Modernism arose as a result of the post-revolution Mexican regime seeking to use culture as a means to unite the nation and visual artists efforts to use their craft in furtherance of this goal. The chart below graphically illustrates the road to this new Mexican art school.

The Jacques and Natasha Gelman collection is one of the most extensive collections of Mexican Modernist art in the world. Jacques and Natasha Gelman were both born in Eastern Europe but met and married in Mexico City. After the outbreak of the World War II, they made Mexico their home.

They began collecting art soon after their marriage, commissioning and buying works from the leading Mexican artists. They became friendly with most of the artists, acting sometimes as patrons and other times as promoters. Jacques died in 1986 and Natasha 12 years later. Natasha had continued adding to the collection after Jacques' death and the collection continues to be expanded post her death.

The stars of the exhibition are the husband and wife team Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

Rivera's bombastic personality, revolutionary politics, and inspiring murals made him a celebrity. Although at one time he overshadowed his equally talented wife, Kahlo's fame has far outstripped Rivera's since his death. The raw emotion of her paintings still resonates today, and her intense self-portraits have made her face familiar throughout the globe.

In addition to works from these two personalities, the exhibition includes paintings from Lola Álvarez Bravo, María Izquerdo, David Alfano Sisqueiros, Rufino Tamayo, and others. The exhibition also includes a large number of photographs and garments and jewelry akin to those worn by Frida during her time in the limelight.

While murals are a key part of the Mexican Modernism movement, only one example of this genre is included in the exhibition and that is a reproduction of Diego Rivera's The History of Mexico. Diego began painting this mural in 1929, the year he married Frida. This mural is emplaced in the main stairway of the National Palace in Mexico City and cemented Rivera's place as the foremost Mexican muralist. The mural chronicles the history of the country with the Aztec culture at the base. The topmost layer depicts the country's future.

The History of Mexico (detail)
Diego Rivera, 1929 - 1935

The remaining Diego Rivera works in the exhibition combine to show the range of his talent beyond murals. From a blending of the human and botanical (Landscape with Cacti, 1931), to portraiture (Portrait of Cristina Kahlo, 1934), to nude studies (Nude with Long Hair (Dolores Olmedo), 1930; Nude with Beads (Frida Kahlo), 1930), to Cubism (The Last Hour, 1915), to genre (The Healer, 1943), Diego's range is phenomenal and his work captivating. The most stunning of his efforts in the exhibition though were Portrait of Natasha Gelman, Sunflowers, and Calla Lily Vendor.

In 1943, Jacques Gelman commissioned Diego Rivera to paint a portrait of his wife; the below work was the result.

Portrait of Natasha Gelman, 1943
Diego Rivera

The portrait lies along a perfect diagonal line with the subject framed at the head by upright Calla Lilies and the litheness of the lower extremities accentuated by horizontal lilies.The shape of the gown aligns with the shape of the lilies. The red hair and bold stare of the sitter contrasts with the other major elements of the picture.

The Calla Lilies in this picture meshes nicely with the mass of lilies in the Calla Lily Vendor and they contrast, both in color and subject, with Sunflowers which, in this exhibition, is positioned between the two.

Sunflowers, 1943
Diego Rivera

Calla Lily Vendor, 1943
Diego Rivera

Frida Kahlo had an intimate relationship with pain throughout her life; and many of her paintings reported on this pain or reflected on its effects. Frida had polio at an early age, resulting in one leg being shorter than the other. She had a catastrophic accident when she was 18 and suffered chronic, debilitating pain for the rest of her life. She married Diego Rivera in 1929 and suffered through multiple episodes of his unfaithfulness, including with her sister. Frida suffered a miscarriage, probably a result of internal damage suffered during the accident when she was 18 years old,

Frida's paintings are raw and emotion-filled but they are also steeped in Mexicanidad, a key ingredient of Mexican Modernism.

Diego on my Mind (Self-Portrait as Tehuana), 1943
Frida Kahlo

Self-Portrait with Necklace, 1933
Frida Kahlo

Self-Portrait on Bed, 1937
Frida Kahlo

Self-Portrait with Red and Gold Dress, 1941
Frida Kahlo

Frida and the Miscarriage, 1932
Frida Kahlo

The third leg of Mexican Modernism was photography and that mode is well represented in this exhibition. Photographs (black and white) serve as separators for the main segments of the exhibition. For example, there are a set of pictures between the first works and the Diego Rivera paintings and another set of photographs between the diego and the Frida works. The pictures between the Frida and Kahlo paintings are pictures featuring the husband and wife in various settings and poses.

I have been studying the work of Frida Kahlo intensively over the course of the past year and this exhibition allowed me to add to that knowledge base. But it also framed her work within this broader school and given me a path for further investigation.

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Frida Kahlo linkages in the National Portrait Gallery's Eye to I exhibition

Frida Kahlo, the Mexican artist currently featured in the Brooklyn Museum's Frida Kahlo: Appearances can be Deceiving exhibit, is linked to a number of the artists included in the National Portrait Gallery's (NPGs) exhibition titled Eye to I: Self-Portraits from 1900 to Today. Drawing from the museum's sizable collection of self-portraits, this exhibit "seeks to reassess the significance of self-portraiture in relation to the country's history and culture."

A Frida Kahlo self-portrait was not included in the NPG exhibit but I was able to locate the one below in the collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA).

Frida Kahlo
Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky, 1937
Oil on Masonite

The Kahlo self-portrait commemorates the brief affair that she had with Leo Trotsky shortly after his arrival in Mexico in 1937 as well as stipulating her political leanings. The letter in her hand is a dedication to Trotsky which states "with all my love." Kahlo is wearing the distinctive clothing of the Tehuantepec women of southwest Mexico while the staging of the photo draws upon a Mexican vernacular style called retablos.

The Eye to I self-portrait with the most direct link to Kahlo is that of her husband Diego Rivera. The two were first married in 1929. "Theirs was a volatile relationship that underwent marital infidelities, the pressure of Rivera's career, a divorce and remarriage, and Kahlo's deteriorating health" (NMNA).

Diego Rivera
1930
Lithograph

Diego is remembered for his public art and murals in Mexico and the US, probably the most famous of which is the 27-panel fresco Detroit Industry prepared for the Detroit Institute of Arts. According to the notes accompanying the exhibit, "The lively crosshatching strokes used to model the contours of his face relate directly to the technique he employed in his monumental murals."

Nickolas Muray emigrated to the US from his native Hungary in 1913 and by 1920, he was a much-sought-after photographer to the stars. He met Frida Kahlo in 1931 and they became lovers, a relationship which lasted for a decade.

Nickolas Muray
c. 1935
Gelatin silver print

During the Depression years the celebrity business dried up so Muray switched to commercial and advertising work, becoming a color-photography expert in the process. He is shown above with his one-shot color-separation camera.

Louise Nevelson was a sculptor and artist who briefly apprenticed with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo's husband. According to the notes, "... wiry scratches, squiggles, bold black contours, and a red overdrawing compete for attention. The robust features convey her driven personality along with the muscular expression evident in her later sculpture. The double red contours of the face hint at both profile and full-face poses, suggestive of a rotating head, Pablo Picasso's cubism, and multiple-exposure photography.

Louise Nevelson
c. 1938
Ink and watercolor on paper

Pele deLappe met Diego Rivera and, as a result, became a sketching companion of Frida. She studied in New York in the early 1930s but moved back to San Francisco in 1934. Her works reflected the influences of Rivera and another of his friends David Alfara Siqueiros. "Her lithographs of the 1930s had a muralist's sensibility, with simplified compositions, broad planes, low viewpoints, and heroic figural forms."

Pele deLappe
1938
Graphite on paper

The above drawing conveys her beauty and self-assurance framed in the affect of a mural's monumentality.

©Everythingelse238