News 2008

31 December 2008

	October 13th, 2008 - Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera art works arrive in Chile" About 300 works from Frida and Diego, including Frida’s well-loved self-portraits, will be on display at the La Moneda Cultural Center starting from November 21st, 2008. The exhibition, titled “Frida y Diego: Vidas Compartidas” (“Frida and Diego: Shared Lives”), will be inaugurated by Felipe Calderon, President of Mexico, during an official visit to Chile. The exhibition, organized by Juan Coronel - Diego's nephew, was brought to the center thanks to the Chile-Mexico Fund, a bi-national project supporting cultural exchange between the two countries. Kahlo’s drawings include scenes of community life and her famous piece “Camion,” which recaptures the bus accident that left her partially paralyzed in 1925. Rivera's works include “The Architect,” from his cubist period, and of course pieces from his more socially engaged period, such as snapshots of the lives of laborers, campesinos, and natives all familiar elements of his famous murals. more info in Spanish

	October 13th, 2008 - "Frida Kahlo: Portraits of an Icon" The photograph collection of Spencer Throckmorton is on view at San Jose Museum of Art through March 22, 2009. This exhibition features approximately fifty photographic portraits of Frida and includes works by several of the most renowned photographers of the twentieth century: Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Nickolas Muray. These preeminent photographers produced remarkable portraits of refined artistry and technique that exceed the boundaries documentary photography. Nonetheless, some of the most revealing photographs in the exhibition were taken by her close friends and family, such as Guillermo Kahlo and Lucienne Block, who were also accomplished photographers. Overall, these portraits chronicle Kahlo from the onset of her artistic career until her death and portray her various roles as painter, patient, wife, daughter, lover, and friend. Many of the photographs offer an intimate glimpse of private moments in her bedroom, hospital room, studio, and garden. Other images reveal the artist’s carefully constructed self-image. Often dressed in pre-Columbian attire, Kahlo demonstrates a deep interest in her Mexican heritage while discretely concealing her physically deformed leg beneath her long flowing skirts. Highlights of the exhibition include Bernard Silberstein’s Frida painting The Wounded Table, (1940), which juxtaposes the artist with one of her works in progress. Viewed as a whole, the featured images provide extraordinary insight on an artist who described herself as “la gran ocultadora” or the great concealer. San Jose Museum of Art, 110 South Market Street San Jose, CA October 11th - March 22nd, 2009 artdaily link

	October 5th, 2008 - Amazing closing day of Frida Kahlo exhibition at SFMOMA The Frida Kahlo exhibition at SFMOMA closed on September 28, 2008. The final day of the exhibition saw artist & curator René Yañez’s Pasión por Frida tableaux vivants (living paintings), happening most of the day in the Schwab room, with Frida lookalikes enacting many of Kahlo’s most famous pictures. It seems there were Frida-alikes taking tea in the cafe, wandering the galleries, and washing up in the ladies’. The months of the exhibition have seen a lot of people of every age and gender passing through dressed up to look like Frida, and sometimes the gesture has been camp, but mostly it reflects a deep devotion to this artist whose work speaks so profoundly to so many. The dress Frida affected (she started wearing the traditional clothes in her early 20s) was a highly constructed performance (and in part the long skirts helped hide her physical ailments). It was also a statement, a political one, of pride in indigenous Mexican culture, and as many readers will know, the regional costume Frida adopted was of the matriarchal community of Tehuana in southern Mexico. see the SFMOMA/OpenSpace slideshow of René Yañez' set

	September 7th, 2008 - "Frida's bed" a book by Slavenka Drakulic "In Drakulic Slavenka's latest book, Frida's Bed, published by Penguin Canada, she imagines Frida in her last days lying in bed recounting her life. As Frida's story is laid out for us, we learn how pain and her illnesses defined everything in her life from her work to her interpersonal relationships. It's not a pretty picture that Drakulic draws for us, but there is a beauty in it that goes beyond mere aesthetics; the beauty of strength of will, courage, and self-awareness." by Richard Marcus "Drakulic's contribution to material that has been covered extensively, in biographical books and movies, isn't immediately clear. Instead of art criticism or theory, she reserves analysis for Kahlo herself, overlaying scenes with internal monologue. This reliance on unspoken thoughts invites comparisons to a one-woman play. The dramas of her life - her longing for love, her near-fatal experiences and adultery - served to confirm her existence, an impression reflected repeatedly in her artwork, where, Drakulic writes, Kahlo painted herself over and over again to offer proof that she was still alive. Her narrow survival and physical disfigurement followed her every day." read the complete review by Sarah Norris

	August 29th, 2008 - Frida Kahlo’s Work Displayed in Iceland for First Time Artwork by Frida will be exhibited in Iceland for the first time next spring, when the National Gallery of Iceland will open an extensive overview exhibition of Mexican artists. “It will also include Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros and more,” director of the National Gallery Halldór Björn Runólfsson announced. The works come from the collection of the late Mexican film producer Jacques Gelman, which is now held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “We were incredibly lucky to get our hands on it,” Runólfsson said. While the exhibition of Mexican artwork will be running in the National Gallery, the National Theater of Iceland will stage a play on Kahlo’s life.

	August 24th, 2008 - Frida inspires Gael Le Cornec's one-woman show This is a spirited and sympathetic performance by Gael Le Cornec as Mexican fabulist painter Frida Kahlo. Humberto Robles' play concentrates on the inseparable duality in Kahlo's life between pain and passion. Le Cornec cuts a vivid figure in her folkloric Mexican Tehuana costume. On a set colourfully bedecked with Day Of The Dead skeleton figurines and a copy of The Two Fridas, Kahlo's most famous painting, she's a wildcat in white frills, alternately teasing and flirting with the audience and snarling at us. The self-obsession, mercurial mood changes and dark wit feel edgy, like the symptoms of madness. As she enacts the terrible bus accident that crippled Kahlo at 17, her fierce love for her unfaithful husband Diego Rivera, and the miscarriages that were the subject of some of her most unforgettable paintings, Le Cornec's Kahlo makes clear that in the case of this particular artist, there was no division between life and art. The surrealist André Breton exhibited her work; this Kahlo convincingly makes the point that what seemed like surrealism was a broken, passionate woman courageously painting an agonising reality that she tried to make beautiful. 1 -24 August 2008 - Edinburgh Festival Fringe go to the Fringe Review website


	July 26th, 2008 - Some Frida's Paintings at El Paso Museum of Art "Blake to Kahlo to Warhol: Masterworks from the Harry Ransom Center" is the title of the exhibition organized by El Paso Museum of Art that will include European, Mexican and American masterworks from the 19th and 20th centuries by well known artists such as William Blake, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Tom Lea, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol. November 16, 2008 - March 29, 2009 El Paso Museum of Art One Arts Festival Plaza El Paso, Texas 79901

	July 25th, 2008 - Frida's photographs in New York Thirty-six stunning photographs of Kahlo, Diego Rivera and their circle, with a smattering of shots of the indigenous people that the post-Mexican revolution artistic reawakening celebrated, are on view at Throckmorton Fine Art after traveling to 15 museums in the U.S., England and Spain. Edward Weston, Lucienne Bloch, Tina Modotti, Lola Alvarez Bravo and Nickolas Muray are among those whose works are displayed. "Frida Kahlo and the Mexican Renaissance" July10 - September 14, 2008 THROCKMORTON FINE ART 145 EAST 57th STREET, 3RD FLOOR NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10022 read an interesting article about the exhibition more info at the museum website

	June 12th, 2008 - A new book on Frida by Maria Cristina Secci Maria Cristina Secci, Italian teacher, writer and journalist living and working in Mexico City, is the curator of "Doppio ritratto", a new book focusing on the relationship between Frida and Diego Rivera, accompanied by a text by Patrizia Cavalli, one of the most remarkable representative of the Italian poetry of the second half of the 20th century. link to the editor website (Italian)

	June 12th, 2008 - "Frida Kahlo" exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Organized by world-renowned Frida Kahlo biographer and art historian Hayden Herrera, the presentation will include about 50 paintings from the beginning of Kahlo's career in 1926, when she began to paint while recuperating from a near-fatal bus accident, to 1954, when she died at age 47. The event includes an Educational Program, a course titled "Learning from Frida Kahlo: Exploring Identity in Modern and Contemporary Art" and a Family Program. Saturday, June 14, 2008 - Sunday, September 28, 2008 more info at the SFMOMA website

	May 1st, 2008 - Two new books on Frida by Salomon Grimberg “She was vulnerable,” says Salomon Grimberg, the author of two new books on Kahlo - one focusing on her still lifes, including some that came to light during his research, and the other centring on a previously unpublished interview she gave to a psychologist friend. From talking to people who knew Kahlo and reading their letters to and from the artist, he has painstakingly arrived at new interpretations of her work. Her still lifes have received less attention, but Grimberg believes they yield vital clues to her inner life. “The self-portraits were created very intentionally, thinking of others and how she wanted to be perceived. The still lifes were Kahlo’s personal reflections that she did not want to share with other people." Many artists have painted still lifes heavy with the symbolism of mortality. But Kahlo seems to have been particularly obsessed with it. In the interview with Olga Campos, recorded on September 9, 1950, when she was 43 four years before her death Kahlo said: “I think about death very often; too much. I have wanted to die out of desperation. I imagine that if I were dying I would be thinking of Diego.” “Everybody at some level feels lonely, misunderstood, hurting and isolated,” says Grimberg. “That’s what people identify with in her work.” “Painting is the only skill I have and nothing else,” she told Campos. Plainly she was wrong. In putting the darker emotions we all experience into visual form, in insisting on colour and vitality and beauty, she communicated that life is always worth living no matter how painful it can be. "Frida Kahlo: The Still Lifes" (Merrell, April 2008) and "Frida Kahlo: Song of Herself" (Merrell, April 2008), by Salomon Grimberg

	March 23rd, 2008 - Frida's painting inspires Coldplay's new album title Coldplay have confirmed that their new album is to be named 'Vida la Vida' -- after the inscription meaning long live life that frontman Chris Martin saw on a Frida Kahlo painting. The band's follow-up album to 2005's 'X&Y' has been completed and will be released on June 16. Speaking to Rolling Stone magazine, Martin explains that the Mexican artist's painting was inspiring. He said: “She went through a lot of shit, of course, and then she started a big painting in her house that said 'Viva la Vida'. I just loved the boldness of it.” Martin also admits that other connations are apparant with his choice of title, especially that of Ricky Martin's Living La Vida Loca global hit . He said: “Everyone thinks it comes from Ricky Martin, which is fine. I have absolute respect. I've been through this before, naming something or someone and everyone saying that 'That’s a terrible name'." Adding: "But then saying, 'Well, fuck you, that's what it's called, and I'll be proved to be right eventually'. So when 'Viva la Vida' came along, I was kind of annoyed because I'm going to have to try and convince everybody of this, but it just felt right.” The tracklisting for the album is yet to be confirmed, but Rolling Stone reports that two tracks that could be included are 'Lovers In Japan' and 'Strawberry Swing'. taken from Rolling Stone

	February 4th, 2008 - Muray's photos at the Delaware Art Museum The picture exhibition "Frida Kahlo: Through the Lens of Nickolas Muray." is on view at the Delaware Art Museum from February 2nd to March 30th. Muray’s photographs of Frida celebrate her deep interest in her Mexican heritage, her life, and the people significant to her. This exhibition is comprised of approximately 50 photographic portraits of Frida Kahlo dating from 1937 to 1941. artdaily link

	February 4th, 2008 - Frida inspires the latest collection of the Italian fashion designer Raffaella Curiel Raffaella Curiel presented her Spring-Summer 2008 high-fashion collection - deeply inspired by Frida - during the AltaRoma fashion week at Rome's Auditorium, Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2008. go to my "fashion" page to see more images

	January 20th, 2008 - "Frida Kahlo" exhibition moves from the Walker Art Center of Minneapolis to the Philadelphia Museum of Art Organized in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the artist's birth, Frida Kahlo is the first major Kahlo exhibition in the United States in nearly fifteen years. It presents over 40 of the artist's most important self-portraits, still lifes, and portraits from the beginning of her career in 1926 until her death in 1954. The exhibition includes loans from over 30 private and institutional collections in the United States, Mexico, France, and Japan, several of which have never been on public view in the United States. Frida Kahlo also features a selection of nearly 100 photographs of Kahlo and her husband, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, by preeminent international photographers of the period, such as Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Lola Alvarez Bravo, Gisele Freund, Tina Modotti, and Nickolas Muray. Philadelphia Museum of Art • February 20 - May 18, 2008 detailed info at the Museum website

	January 20th, 2008 - "Frida and me, Common Threads" - Philadelphia This February Projects Gallery proudly presents Frida and Me, Common Threads. Inspired by the centennial exhibition of Frida Kahlo at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (February 20 until May 18), four contemporary Latina artists join together to celebrate and express their common connections. Doris Nogueira-Rogers, Michelle Angela Ortiz, Marilyn Rodriguez-Behrle, and Marta Sanchez present works that reflect on the intertwining relationships between various identities and cultures of Latin American female artists. Projects Gallery, 629 N 2nd St Philadelphia, PA 19123 , February 1- 23, 2008 artdaily link