Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Mexican Modernism @ Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach - From the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection

Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Mexican Modernism from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection 

Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach

October 23, 2021 - February 6, 2022

The Norton Museum of Art presents Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Mexican Modernism from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection. Featuring over 150 works, including paintings and works on paper collected by Jacques and Natasha Gelman alongside photographs and period clothing, the exhibition includes the largest group of works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera ever on view at the institution. Presenting these artists’ creative pursuits in the broader context of the art created during the renaissance following the end of the Mexican Revolution in 1920, the exhibition also includes work by Manuel and Lola Álvarez Bravo, Miguel Covarrubias, Gunther Gerzso, María Izquierdo, Carlos Mérida, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Juan Soriano, and Rufino Tamayo. It explores these artists’ distinctive interpretations of modernism as expressed in themes of nature, home, and family in photographs and easel and large-scale mural paintings.

Jacques Gelman and his wife Natasha built strong relationships with leading figures of the artistic movement that had arisen after the Mexican Revolution. The Gelman Collection consists primarily of works the couple acquired from modernist friends in this period. Jacques Gelman was a film producer during the Golden Age of Mexican cinema in the mid-twentieth century and he and his wife’s close bonds with Mexico’s creative community are underscored by the numerous portraits of them made by friends featured in the exhibition.

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera are among the most influential figures of Mexican art in this period, known for their creative synergy with each other along with their personal relationship. Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Mexican Modernism emphasizes the connections between Kahlo, Rivera, and their contemporaries’ collective experimentation with modernism. Featuring 22 paintings and works on paper by Frida Kahlo and 18 paintings, works on paper, and aquatints by Diego Rivera, the exhibition addresses the artists’ private experience with each other and situates their work in the larger history of modernism in Mexico, a narrative enhanced with portraits and photographs of the couple by artist friends and peers. Sections of the exhibition address the resonance and exchange of influence evident in the two artists’ work, along with Frida Kahlo’s struggles with lifelong chronic pain induced by a childhood battle with polio, and a bus accident that shattered her pelvis and spine at 18 years old.

Tracing the influence of Mexicanidad, the belief that Mexicans could create an authentic modernism by exploring the country’s indigenous culture, the exhibition reveals the centrality of this idea to Kahlo’s iconography, manifested as a distinctive brand of magical realism colored by Mexican folk art. Even her adoption of traditional Tehuana clothing reflected Frida Kahlo’s desire to establish a connection with ancestral Mexico while expressing a cross-cultural identity that honored her heritage and status as a modern woman. A selection of period vintage dresses sourced in Mexico, which include colorful embroidered blouses and full skirts, is on view in the exhibition, enriching the presentation’s examination of her art in the context of her life and persona.

“This exhibition offers viewers the opportunity to see beloved works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in-person and experience the physical impact of their creative vision,” said Ellen E. Roberts, Harold and Anne Berkley Smith Curator of American Art. “The scope of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Mexican Modernism returns major works of Mexican Modernism to the context in which they were produced—in a collaborative artistic community seeking to make an authentically Mexican modern art by exploring and embracing shared roots and folkloric traditions. It will be especially exciting to have the exhibition on view at the Norton, since these works have such resonance with the masterpieces of American and European modernism in the museum’s collection.”

Notable works in the exhibition include:

• Juan Soriano, Girl with Still Life, 1939 – Juan Soriano first encountered Kahlo at the age of fifteen, not long after he moved to Mexico City from Guadalajara. His early works are often subtle and dream-like, utilizing a personal visual language that owes much to Kahlo’s own metaphorical narratives. In the late 1930s Soriano painted a number of images of children holding and contemplating objects, their meaning often mysterious. They evoke the unique ways in which children perceive objects and the world around them, often uninhibited by established ideas of utility or beauty.

• Nickolas Muray, Frida Kahlo on Bench #5, 1939 – This photograph was taken in the New York studio of the photographer Nickolas Muray, who photographed celebrities across the world for magazines like Vanity Fair and Vogue. Nickolas Muray and Frida Kahlo met in 1931 and embarked on a volatile romantic relationship that lasted nearly a decade. Nickolas Muray’s photographs of Frida Kahlo are among the most well-known images of her, capturing the artist’s confidence and poise in vivid color. Nickolas Muray was also a supporter of Frida Kahlo’s work, purchasing her painting What the Water Gave Me (1938) from her exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1938.

• Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Monkeys, 1943 – Flora and fauna feature prominently in Frida Kahlo’s paintings, often representing larger themes within her work. In this painting Frida Kahlo is surrounded by four monkeys, which she was kept as pets in Coyoacán. Frequently described as surrogates for her maternal energies, the monkeys in this work may allude to Kahlo’s new role as a mentor as she began teaching at La Esmeralda, the Ministry of Public Education’s art school, the previous year. When her declining health stopped her from teaching, she invited students to meet at her home, forming a small group of four regulars who became known as “Los Fridos.”

• Diego Rivera, Calla Lily Vendor, 1943 – In murals, easel paintings, and watercolors made throughout his career, Diego Rivera represented the everyday lives of the indigenous peoples of Mexico. Among his most iconic subjects were calla lily sellers, the earliest of which he painted in 1925. In this version the jubilant bundle of calla lilies dominates the canvas, largely obscuring a figure behind them who appears to be adding more to the basket. The two women in the foreground wear traditional fringed shawls, the one on the left pulling a length of fabric around the basket that will be used to tie it to one of their backs.

• María Izquierdo, Bride from Papantla (Portrait of Rosalba Portes Gil), 1944 – This colorful portrait depicts a young bride from Papantla, a region in the state of Veracruz. Brides there traditionally wear a white covering over their back called a quexquémitl, as well as a long white veil and floral headdress. Maria Izquierdo’s interest in representing Mexico’s diverse clothing traditions in her work, as well as wearing them herself, mirrors Kahlo’s own practice. Both were part of a larger trend of wearing traditional costumes that became prevalent in the decades following the Mexican Revolution and was a means of paying homage to the country’s native cultures while also supporting the new emerging identity of the nation.

Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Mexican Modernism is organized by the Vergel Foundation and MondoMostre in collaboration with the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL). It is curated by the Vergel Foundation curator, Magda Carranza de Akle, and for the Norton by Ellen E. Roberts, Harold and Anne Berkley Smith Curator of American Art.

A companion exhibition titled Frida and Me, curated by Assistant Curator Rachel Gustafson, presents a selection of works that respond to and are inspired by Frida Kahlo’s works and practice.

NORTON MUSEUM OF ART

1450 South Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach, FL 33401

norton.org

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Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism @ Frist Art Museum, Nashville

Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection
Frist Art Museum, Nashville
May 24 – September 2, 2019

The Frist Art Museum presents Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection—an exhibition that captures the vitality and expressiveness of twentieth-century Mexican art with iconic works by Frida Kahlo, her husband Diego Rivera, and their contemporaries, including Manuel Álvarez Bravo, María Izquierdo, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Organized by the Vergel Foundation and MondoMostre in cavollaboration with the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL), the exhibition is on display in the Frist’s Ingram Gallery.

Among the more than 150 works on view are seven painted self-portraits by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera’s Calla Lily Vendor, and numerous portraits of the Gelmans, plus more than fifty photographs that provide insight into Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s passionate love affair and how the couple lived, worked, and dressed.

Husband-and-wife collectors Jacques and Natasha Gelman were glamorous and wealthy Eastern European refugees who married in Mexico in 1941, took part in Mexico City’s vibrant art scene, and acquired art mostly from their artist friends. In 1943, Jacques commissioned a full-length portrait of Natasha from Diego Rivera, Mexico’s most celebrated painter. “The Gelmans formed close friendships with many artists in this exhibition, often acting as patrons and promoters of their careers and assembling one of the finest collections of modern Mexican art in the world along the way,” says Frist Art Museum curator Trinita Kennedy.

Born in 1907 in Coyoacán, a suburb south of Mexico City, Frida Kahlo had a difficult childhood, facing a bout with polio at age six and a bus accident at the age of 18 that left her disabled and often bedridden. “It was during her recovery from the accident that Kahlo began to paint, in part because she was bored in bed. She spent hours alone with an easel and a mirror painting her own face,” says Trinita Kennedy. “She never attended art school, but as she considered a career as an artist, she sought out several of Mexico’s leading painters, including Rivera, whom she had met several years earlier.” Their friendship became a courtship, with the two marrying in 1929. Unfaithful to each other, the pair divorced in 1939, only to remarry in 1940.

In the early twentieth century, Mexico’s artistic avant-garde was closely tied to political and social revolution. Following Mexico’s civil war from 1910 to 1920, the government enlisted male painters to produce monumental murals in public buildings. Diego Rivera was a revered figure in this muralism movement and an avowed Communist. “Using art, which could be understood by the masses, Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros and others helped Mexico fashion a new identity rooted in its own unique history,” says Trinita Kennedy.

Diego Rivera’s artistic works, as well as his vocal opinions on the role of art, would shape the development of Mexican culture throughout the first half of the twentieth century. “His depictions of Mexican traditions and everyday life soon came to epitomize Mexican culture at home and abroad, including the United States where he created murals in San Francisco, Detroit, and New York,” says Kennedy. Diego Rivera also created easel paintings representing poignant scenes of everyday life and labor in Mexico, such as Calla Lily Vendor, a luminous painting that celebrates the beauty and strength of Mexico and its people.

Like Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo infused her work with mexicanidad, an identification with Mexico’s distinct national history, traditions, culture, and natural environment, but in a much more personal way. About a third of her paintings are self-portraits, the works for which she is now most celebrated. They accentuate her distinctive appearance, characterized by a v-shaped unibrow, deep brown eyes, mustache, carefully coiffed hair with braids, and indigenous Mexican clothing. In Diego on My Mind (Self-Portrait as Tehuana), for example, she crowns herself with a festive indigenous Mexican headdress known as a resplandor.

Known primarily in artistic circles during her lifetime, Frida Kahlo’s paintings began to attract widespread international attention in the decades following her death. Her work and life story continued to resonate in pop culture with the success of Frida, a 1983 biography by Hayden Herrera, and the 2002 biopic Frida, starring Salma Hayek.

The exhibition includes more than fifty photographs of Frida Kahlo, most of which were taken by noted photographers, such as Lola Álvarez Bravo, Nickolas Muray, and Edward Weston. There is also a special gallery focused on Frida Kahlo’s unique personal style, which offers insight into her wardrobe, hairstyles, and jewelry. An interactive touchscreen allows visitors to explore elements of her clothing and to learn why she wore them. The exhibition concludes with haunting black-and-white photographs of Kahlo’s crutches, corset, and bed, taken recently at the Casa Azul, her former home in Coyoacán, by contemporary artists, including Patti Smith. “Directly associated with her pain, these objects are venerated as relics,” says Trinita Kennedy. “As the photos attest, Kahlo’s ability to create magical paintings despite the suffering caused by her broken body captivates and inspires many of us today.”

The works collected by the Gelmans offer an unrivaled opportunity to encounter the chaotic and creative Mexican art world of the first half of the twentieth century in all its complexity. Modern Mexican art exerted a key influence on modern art in the United States, and its impact continues to be felt throughout the world today.

FRIST ART MUSEUM
919 Broadway, Nashville, Tennessee, 37203
fristartmuseum.org

Exposition Mexique, Grand Palais, Paris : Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco et les avant-gardes

Mexique 1900 - 1950
Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco et les avant-gardes
Grand Palais, Galeries nationales, Paris
5 octobre 2016 – 23 janvier 2017

Affiche Rmn-Grand Palais / Photo Claudia Herrera 

DIEGO RIVERA, Río Juchitán, 1953-1955

© Museo Nacional de Arte, INBA

La Réunion des musées nationaux-Grand Palais et le MUNAL, Museo nacional de Arte de Mexico, se sont associés pour organiser une exposition dressant, pour la première fois en France, un vaste panorama de la modernité mexicaine, depuis les prémices de la Révolution jusqu’au milieu du XXe siècle, complété par des interventions ponctuelles d’artistes contemporains.

L’art du Mexique au XXe siècle présente le paradoxe d’être étroitement connecté aux avant-gardes internationales, tout en présentant une incroyable singularité, une étrangeté même, et une puissance qui défient notre regard européen.

Dans la première partie de l’exposition, on découvre comment cette modernité puise son inspiration dans l’imaginaire collectif et les traditions du XIXe siècle. Cette relation, évidente dans l’art académique qui se développe après la restauration de la République en 1867, se prolongera dans les préceptes idéologiques de l’École Mexicaine de Peinture et de Sculpture, dirigée par José Vasconcelos à partir de 1921. Les courants internationaux viennent contrebalancer cet ancrage dans la tradition. Au tournant du XXe siècle, symbolisme et décadentisme trouvent au Mexique des expressions fascinantes comme le célèbre tableau d’Angel Zárraga, La Femme et le pantin (1909). Peu à peu s’affirment les expérimentations esthétiques d’artistes mexicains en contact avec l’avant-garde parisienne dans les premières décennies du siècle, au premier rang desquels Diego Rivera.

La deuxième partie de l’exposition s’attache à montrer comment la Révolution mexicaine, en tant que conflit armé, comportait la planification d’un nouveau projet national. La création artistique des années qui ont suivi la révolution revêt un caractère idéologique ; elle s’appuie sur d’autres moyens que la peinture sur chevalet, tels que le muralisme et le graphisme. L’exposition met naturellement l’accent sur les oeuvres des trois artistes phares du muralisme mexicain, los tres grandes : Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco. Cette révolution masculine, qui a ouvert la voie à de nombreuses possibilités nouvelles, a permis aux femmes de participer à l’effort économique ; cette situation a encouragé les femmes à se faire elles aussi une place sur la scène artistique, en tant que peintres ou mécènes.

L’arbre Frida Kahlo ne doit pas cacher une forêt de personnalités extraordinaires comme Nahui Ollin, Rosa Rolanda ou les photographes Tina Modotti et Lola Álvarez Bravo.

Parallèlement à l’École Mexicaine de Peinture et de Sculpture des années 20 et 30, cette période a également été marquée par l’avènement de nombreuses autres démarches expérimentales. Le triomphe du muralisme et de l’art nationaliste a éclipsé ces mouvements d’avant-garde alternatifs, qui ont revendiqué le droit de participer à la scène artistique internationale, indépendamment du paradigme révolutionnaire.

La troisième partie de l’exposition permet de découvrir toute une sélection d’artistes et d’oeuvres se présentant comme des alternatives aux discours idéologiques de l’époque, des masques hallucinants de Germán Cueto aux portraits énigmatiques de Robert Montenegro et aux abstractions de Gerardo Murillo « Dr. Atl », Marius de Zayas ou Rufino Tamayo.

Enfin, la quatrième partie, intitulée Rencontre de deux mondes : Hybridation, montre comment, depuis le début du XXe siècle, la présence d’artistes mexicains aux États-Unis, comme Marius de Zayas, Miguel Covarrubias et surtout les grands muralistes, a joué un rôle décisif pour les mouvements d’avant-garde de villes comme New York, Détroit ou Los Angeles. Et inversement, du fait de la notoriété acquise par les artistes mexicains à l’étranger durant les premières décennies du XXe siècle, de nombreux artistes étrangers ont décidé de délocaliser leur activité au Mexique. En collaboration avec les artistes locaux, ils sont parvenus à développer une scène particulièrement riche, en particulier autour du surréalisme avec Carlos Merida, Jose Horna, Leonora Carrington et Alice Rahon.

L’exposition clôt la chronique de ces échanges, sources d’une perpétuelle « renaissance », avec l’arrivée de Mathias Goeritz au Mexique en 1949, mais leur vitalité est encore illustrée dans les oeuvres d’artistes majeurs de la scène actuelle, à l’image de Gabriel Orozco et de ses « frottages » pris dans le métro parisien.

Cette exposition est organisée par la Rmn-Grand Palais et la Secretaría de Cultura / Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes / Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico.

Commissaire de l'exposition : Agustín Arteaga, directeur du Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico

Grand Palais, Paris
www.grandpalais.fr