Frida Kahlo’s legendary paintings and tumultuous life will be the subject of a new exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum “Frida: Immersive Dream”, which focuses on the artist’s creative process and her relationship with painter Diego Rivera, going back to the 1950s.
The exhibit, which opens on 25 March 2019, will honor Kahlo’s legacy and will feature approximately 30 painted works, which the Brooklyn Museum describes as a “playful and haunting exploration of Kahlo’s memories, her story, and the darkness that is etched in so many of her pictures”.
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The exhibit will also include objects from Kahlo’s personal collection including art objects, prints, drawings, paintings, postcards, diaries, letters, poems, films, photographs, designs and furniture, and will feature some of the most well-known paintings from the artist’s career, including Ambulante (1953), Black Mask (1953), Feast of the Goat (1955), La Malinche (1955), Zamas (1956), The Man in the Guajira (1957), Post-Impressionist and Impressionist, Untitled (1957), Portrait of a Lady (1957), The Love of Three Women (1957), Hips and Alecks (1958), Vase of Flowers (1959), Dos Menos (1960), Frida Kahlo and Mi Muse (1960), The Dirty House (1960), Altars of the Blessed Virgin (1963), Enigmatic Requiem (1963), The Holy Lady (1963), Untitled: My Life with Diego Rivera (1967), and Frida Kahlo (1969).
Although most of the paintings have not been on public display for nearly 50 years, the show will explore the circumstances behind each picture. According to the Brooklyn Museum, Kahlo lived just blocks from her house where the exhibit will take place, a fact that remains unexplained.
“Through her remarkable technique and eye for detail, Kahlo created a vivid world with a mythical quality,” said the exhibition’s curators Maria Semple and Gil Dudek. “Haunting shadows and death knells engulf the life-size houses surrounding her, but a soft smoke flares from the burning lights, and flowers seem to shoot into the air, an acrid sarcophagus of emotion and despair.”
Frida Kahlo’s Zamas (1955) at the Brooklyn Museum. Photograph: National Gallery of Art/Courtesy of Deutsche Kunstverein
Although Kahlo is widely recognized as a prominent feminist artist, there is scant information surrounding her relationship with her husband, and they rarely split. Kahlo’s life was complicated by two public figures, Rivera and her lover, painter Diego Rivera. Kahlo and Rivera were inseparable and rarely worked as a married couple; the exhibit will focus on their lives together, their passion, and Kahlo’s work.
The exhibition is free with admission to the Brooklyn Museum and is expected to be the largest retrospective of Kahlo’s works in a major American museum since her death in 1954.