Frida Kahlo meticulously accumulated a collection of over ... · For example, Martin Munkácsi’s...
7
Transcript of Frida Kahlo meticulously accumulated a collection of over ... · For example, Martin Munkácsi’s...
Frida Kahlo meticulously accumulated a collection of over six thousand photographs over the course of her life. These were images that she took care of, kept, and over time used as references for her paintings.
TThe selection of photographs presented in this exhibition unveil the blend of imagination and everyday experience present in Kahlo’s paintings, and offer a unique opportunity to see the artist’s practice differently – through the photographs she collected.
Family of Matilde Calderón Gonzalez, undatedRicardo Ayulardo
Diego in my mind (Self-portrait as Tehuana) (detail), 1943Frida KahloThe Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of Mexican Art
© 2016 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F.
Photograph
Family of Matilde Calderón Gonzalez, undatedRicardo Ayulardo
Painting
One of the special revelations of Frida’s photographic collection was the influence of her mother, Matilde Calderón. She inspired the artist’s interest in the indigenous Tehuana dress from Oaxaca, where Matilde came from, allowing Frida to portray her Méxican cultural identity or Mexicanidad.
TThe Tehuana dress in the painting was discovered in a spare bathroom in the Casa Azul in 2004, along with other objects from Frida’s wardrobe.
Wedding portrait (Matilde Calderón and Guillermo Kahlo), 1898Anonymous
My Grandparents, My Parents, and I (Family Tree) (detail), 1936Frida KahloArtists Rights Society (ARS), New York
© 2016 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F.
Photograph
Wedding portrait (Matilde Calderón and Guillermo Kahlo), 1898Anonymous
Painting
Frida not only celebrated Méxican culture by wearing elaborate traditional attire and invoking Mexican traditions in her art, but also acknowledged her European heritage from her father Guillermo Kahlo.
FFrida closely monitored the rise of Nazism in Europe and in this painting she subversively uses the format of genealogical charts used by the Nazis to advocate racial purity to affirm her mixed origins.
Ford Factory (River Rouge, Detroit), 1927Charles Scheeler
Self-portrait on the borderline between México and the United States (detail), 1932Frida KahloArtists Rights Society (ARS), New York
© 2016 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F.
Photograph
Ford Factory (River Rouge, Detroit), 1927Charles Scheeler
Painting
Self-portrait on the borderline between México and the United States (detail), 1932Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo travelled extensively around the world producing and exhibiting her art, visiting friends and accompanying her husband, artist Diego Rivera. In Detroit Frida became familiar with one of the greatest expressions of capitalist industry, the Ford Motor Company factory. At that titime, Diego was working on a mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts commissioned by the company.
This painting expresses her ambivalent feelings towards “Gringolandia” (USA).
Frida from behind, 1946Nickolas Muray
Tree of hope, remain strong (detail), 1946Frida KahloCollection of Daniel Filipacchi
© 2016 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F.
Photograph
Frida from behind, 1946Nickolas Muray
Painting
Frida Kahlo lived in constant physical pain, and she gathered and kept visual testimony of that suffering. Pablo Ortiz Monasterio suggests that “maybe it was even she who proposed taking photographs so that she could look at them directly, name them and perhaps recycle them through her art. PhPhysical pain and suffering were for her artistic incentives… it had to be painted, photographed or written as it was – utterly beautiful and crude.”
In Tree of hope, remain strong Frida referenced a photograph taken by Nickolas Muray aer a failed operation in New York in 1943.
Tomic Energy, undatedMartin Munkácsi
Self-portrait with thorn necklace and hummingbird (detail), 1940Frida KahloUniversity of Texas, Austin
© 2016 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F.
Photograph
Painting
Self-portrait with thorn necklace and hummingbird (detail), 1940Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo occasionally drew on her personal collection of images by celebrated photographers that she met and admired, and referenced them in her work.
For example, Martin Munkácsi’s cat aappears in her Self-portrait with thorn necklace and hummingbird, a painting that photographer Nickolas Muray treasured in his family apartment.
FFrida and Diego met Martin Munkácsi, also known as "the kinetic man” in New York where this renowned Hungarian photographer was based.
Judas in papier-mâché, undatedAttributed to Frida Kahlo
The Dream (The Bed), 1940 Frida KahloCollection of Selma and Nesuhi Ertegun
© 2016 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F.
Photograph
Judas in papier-mâché, undatedAttributed to Frida Kahlo
Painting
Frida Kahlo had a papier-mâché skeleton on the canopy of her bed that Diego called "Frida's lover." For Frida Judas not only was an amusing reminder of mortality, but a reminder of the Méxican tradition of hanging and burning effigies of Judas Iscariot over Easter.
TThe use of this photograph attributed to Frida Kahlo is apparent in The Dream (The Bed), a painting that reflects Kahlo’s tendency to put forward traumatic events and her obsession with her broken body.
