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Museo Dolores Olmedo Patiño - Mexico City

04 April 2014

26th October 2019

As of September 7th 2019, the public has been able to enjoy the renovation of the museum's permanent museography, which includes the collection of works by Frida Kahlo.
On September 17th, 1994, El Olmedo opened its doors to the public. This space, conceived by Dolores Olmedo Patiño, concentrates today the world's largest collections of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo meet again in the rooms of El Olmedo to celebrate 25 years of the museum. As part of the renovation of the museology of the permanent collection, the public will be able to visit, from September 7, "Diego & Frida. 25 years in El Olmedo". It is the first time in the history of the museum that the work of both artists coexists in one room, since previously they had been exhibited separately.

The new museum presentation of the permanent collection also includes works by Angelina Beloff and the exhibition Frida –My Life–, by Renate Reichert, acquired in 1999. In addition, the Moroleón series of catrines are added to the tour of the Popular Art Hall, Guanajuato, and Judas by Carmen Caballero.

"Diego & Frida. 25 years in El Olmedo" includes  27 paintings by Diego Rivera and 20 by Frida Kahlo". 

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4th April 2014

Check out this link, watch an interesting video of the Museum included in the Google Art Project.

The Dolores Olmedo Patiño Musem (Hacienda La Noria - 5843 Av. Mexico - Xochimilco district of Mexico City) holds as part of its permanent exhibit the most important and representative collection of paintings and drawings of Frida Kahlo. Included are works such as the Portrait of Alicia Galant dated 1927, which was Frida's first easel painting; and the autobiographical works such as Mi Nana y Yo (My Nanny and Me), and La Columna Rota (The Broken Column) which are paintings that reveal how Kahlo depicted her own reality by employing a mixture of realistic and symbolic elements.

In the painting Autorretrato con Changuito (Self portrait with Monkey) Frida depicted herself bound to symbolic images whereby she revealed the children that she was unable to bear. In the canvas Hospital Henry Ford of 1932, the laces that Frida holds with her left hand are umbilical cords or arteries that are tied to six elements related to the supposed abortion that she had recently suffered. Another testimonial work called Unos Cuantos Piquetitos (A Few Small Nips), inspired by a sensasionalist newspaper article, refers to a personal situation of Frida's life; it was painted when she discovered Rivera's affair with her sister Cristina.

Part of the Kahlo collection is the masterpiece El Difuntito Dimas (The Deceased Little Dimas), a boy of tree years of age lying on a petate (mat) on the day of his funeral, dressed as Saint Joseph -- a theme that forms part of the Mexican iconographical repertoire of Colonial votive offerings (exvotos) that Frida collected.

The Dolores Olmedo Patiño Museum's Collection is rich in significant works, although no less important are the drawings that portray the symbolic world of Frida; some of them are preparatory sketches and others are finished works in themselves, as is the case of her invaluable diary's drawings that register her experiences and thoughts.