Organized in honor of the 100th anniversary of the artist’s birth, this exhibition of Kahlo’s artwork is a complete retrospective of her life’s work from 1924 until her death in 1954. Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) is perhaps best known for her magic surrealism paintings, and her Burton-Taylor-like marriage to artist Diego Rivera.
Much of Frida Kahlo’s work is autobiographical and very personal, much of it drawn from her lifelong pain after a traumatic accident. When she was 18 years old she was involved in a bus and trolley accident that nearly killed her and crushed much of her body. A railing also pierced her abdomen and uterus and impaired her reproductive abilities so that she could never carry a baby to term.
It is Frida Kahlo’s self portraits that are considered perhaps her most successful works, and the exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art contains almost 100 photographs of Frida and her husband Diego Rivera. Not surprisingly, Kahlo was a favorite subject of photographers such as Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Tina Modotti.
Frida Kahlo has experienced posthumous success in the last 30 years or so, thanks to the several biographies and by a couple of biographical movies. Kahlo has had excellent publicity in the past decades and the quality of her work is richly deserving of high critical acclaim. In many ways, Kahlo’s artwork was overshadowed by that of her husband Diego Rivera, who was already famous as a Mexican muralist.
This important art exhibition was previously at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and will continue at the Philadelphia Museum of Art until May 18, 2008. The Frida Kahlo retrospective will make it’s final United States appearance at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in California from June 16 to September 28, 2008.
Much of Frida Kahlo’s work is autobiographical and very personal, much of it drawn from her lifelong pain after a traumatic accident. When she was 18 years old she was involved in a bus and trolley accident that nearly killed her and crushed much of her body. A railing also pierced her abdomen and uterus and impaired her reproductive abilities so that she could never carry a baby to term.
It is Frida Kahlo’s self portraits that are considered perhaps her most successful works, and the exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art contains almost 100 photographs of Frida and her husband Diego Rivera. Not surprisingly, Kahlo was a favorite subject of photographers such as Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Tina Modotti.
Frida Kahlo has experienced posthumous success in the last 30 years or so, thanks to the several biographies and by a couple of biographical movies. Kahlo has had excellent publicity in the past decades and the quality of her work is richly deserving of high critical acclaim. In many ways, Kahlo’s artwork was overshadowed by that of her husband Diego Rivera, who was already famous as a Mexican muralist.
This important art exhibition was previously at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and will continue at the Philadelphia Museum of Art until May 18, 2008. The Frida Kahlo retrospective will make it’s final United States appearance at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in California from June 16 to September 28, 2008.
