Andrea Kettenmann

The Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) is one of the most important 20th century painters, and one of the few Latin American artists to have achieved a global reputation. In 1983 her work was declared the property of the Mexican state. Kahlo was one of the daughters of an immigrant German photographer and a Mexican woman of Indian origin. Her life and work were more inextricably interwoven than in almost any other artist's case. Two events in her life were of crucial importance. When she was eighteen, a bus accident put her in hospital for a year with a smashed spinal column and fractured pelvis. It was in her sick bed that she first started to paint. Then, aged twenty-one, she married the world-famous Mexican mural artist Diego Rivera. She was to suffer the effects of the accident her whole life long, and was particularly pained by her inability to have children. Kahlo's arresting pictures, most of them small format self-portraits, express the burdens that weighed upon her soul: her unbearable physical pain, the grief that Rivera's occasional affairs prompted, the sorrow her childlessness caused her, her homesickness when living abroad and her longing to feel that she had put down roots, profound loneliness. But they also declare her passionate love for her husband, her pronounced sensuousness, and her unwavering survival instinct.

A képekkel gazdagon illusztrált album Frida Kahlo életét és munkásságát mutatja be.

Slavná mexická umělkyně Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) je jedna z mála latinskoamerických malířek, kterým se podařilo dobýt mezinárodní věhlas. Byla dcerou německého imigranta a Mexičanky indiánského původu. Její život a dílo jsou protkány více než u kteréhokoli jiného umělce a zásadní význam měly v jejím životě dvě události. V osmnácti letech se po nehodě autobusu strávila s vážným úrazem rok v nemocnici, kde se poprvé pokusila malovat. V jednadvaceti letech se provdala za světoznámého mexického umělce Diega Riveru. Následky úrazu trpěla celý život a obzvláště těžce nesla, že nemůže mít děti.

Frida Kahlo's arresting pictures were in many ways expressions of trauma. The daughter of an immigrant German photographer father and a Mexican mother of Indian origin, Kahlo (1907-1954) was involved in a serious road accident at the age of 18, which left her with lifelong health problems, including the inability to have a child. This richly illustrated Basic Art book offers a both accessible and informed introduction to Kahlo's life and work, looking at the artist's dramatic, colourful canvases which combined religious Mexican tradition with Surrealist elements. These paintings can be seen as reflections both of Kahlo's physical distress and of her volatile marriage to world-famous mural painter Diego Rivera - a tumultuous relationship fraught with furious tempers, numerous extra marital affairs, divorce, and remarriage. Many works also explore the Communist political ideals Kahlo and Rivera shared. Kahlo's work received posthumous recognition in the late 1970s and was declared the property of the Mexican state in 1983. Today, she is considered one of the most important 20th-century painters, a feminist icon, and a pioneer of Latin American art.

It was as a revolutionary and troublemaker that Picasso, Dali and Andre Breton described the husband of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, but he was also responsible for creating a public art that was both highly advanced and profoundly accessible. From 1910 Rivera lived in Europe where he absorbed the influence of Cubism. After the Mexican revolution, however, he returned to his homeland and harnessed the lessons of the European avant-garde to the needs of the Mexican people. His own murals, and those of the Mexican Muralists who followed his example, presented a utopian vision of a post-revolutionary Mexico. Rivera's historical paintings expressed his interpretation of the revolution and its ideals, in a style that showed him returning to the pre-Columbian roots of Mexican culture, re-inventing a colourfully realistic visual idiom that could appeal directly to a largely illiterate people. This is the first study which, independently of the exhibition circuit, coherently presents the work of this extraordinary artist.

Among the few women artists who have transcended art history, none had a meteoric rise quite like Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). Her unmistakable face, depicted in over fifty extraordinary self-portraits, has been admired by generations; along with hundreds of photographs taken by notable artists such as Edward Weston, Manuel and Lola Alvarez Bravo, Nickolas Muray, and Martin Munkacsi, they made Frida Kahlo an iconic image of 20th century art. After an accident in her early youth, Frida became a painter of her own free will. Her marriage to Diego Rivera in 1929 placed her at the forefront of an artistic scene not only in the cultural Renaissance of Mexico, but also in the United States. Her work garnered praise from the poet Andre Breton, who added the Mexican painter to the ranks of international surrealism and exhibited her work in Paris in 1939 to the admiration of Picasso, Kandinsky, and Duchamp. We access the intimacy of Frida's affections and passions through a selection of drawings, pages from her personal diary, letters, and an extensive illustrated biography featuring photos of Frida, Diego, and the Casa Azul, Frida's home and the center of her universe. This large-format XXL book allows readers to admire Frida Kahlo's paintings like never before, including unprecedented detail shots and famous photographs. It presents pieces in private collections and reproduces works that were previously lost or have not been exhibited for more than 80 years, forming the most extensive study of Kahlo's work and life to date.