Product Description

During the summer of 2007, the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City hosted the most complete exhibition ever of the work of Frida Kahlo. Marking the centenary of Kahlo's birth, the Palacio showed 354 works, including 64 oil paintings, both beloved and virtually unknown, 45 drawings, 11 watercolors, 5 etchings, plus scores of letters, photographs and other personal ephemera. It was a labor of love, as well as a loving gesture, for Mexico's greatest artistic ambassador. It was also timely; Kahlo is in the air again, as young contemporary artists revisit and recast psychoanalytic, neo-Surrealistic figuration.
In 1953, when Frida Kahlo had her first solo exhibition in Mexico--the only one held in her native country during her lifetime--one critic wrote: "It is impossible to separate the life and work of this extraordinary person. Her paintings are her biography." Kahlo herself puts it better: "They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality." This essential catalogue, based on the Palacio de Bellas Artes exhibition, presents brief essays by a wide range of Kahlo scholars, poets, anthropologists, architects, psychologists and experts in many other disciplines, both from Mexico and abroad--as well as a more extended appreciation of Kahlo by the novelist Carlos Fuentes, along with Kahlo's own paintings, drawings, prints and ephemera.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #843607 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-01
• Released on: 2008-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

About the Author
Frida Kahlo lived fewer than 50 years, but hers was an intensely examined life, and one that enthusiasts all over the world are still poring over. As a child in the suburbs of Mexico City, Kahlo, born in 1907, survived polio. As a teenager already enrolled in premedical studies, her body was brought forcefully to her attention again by a bus accident whose physical repercussions would shape the rest of her days, crucially inform her artwork and eventually kill her. Kahlo was already a painter when she married the political muralist Diego Rivera at 22, a volatile pairing that survived much unrest and one divorce and remarriage. She had her first solo exhibition in 1938, at New Yorkis Julien Levy Gallery, and saw some growth in her career before her death in 1954, but nothing like the steady, exponential increase of interest and respect that has continued since. Exhibits, books and reproductions abound, and 2002 saw the release of a high-profile feature film about her life starring Salma Hayek.

"Carlos Fuentes is one of Mexico's most celebrated novelists and critics. Born in 1928, he is the author of dozens of works of fiction, collections of essays and political commentaries. Fourteen of his novels have been published in the United States, including: The Death of Artemio Cruz, The Old Gringo, Christopher Unborn, and most recently, The Years With Laura Diaz. Fuentes is currently a member of Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights. He divides his time between Mexico City and London."

Customer Reviews

A very well written book, but poorly illustrated.
This book is the catalogue for a huge exhibition held in 2007 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico organized as a celebration for the centennial of Frida Kahlo's birth. Self-proclaimed "the most important devoted to the artist in recent decades", the book starts with an introduction by Carlos Fuentes which can be read like a poetical biography of the artist, with vivid descriptions of the various influences, whether literary or political, that shaped her art (an interesting parallel is made by the writer at the end between Kafka and Kahlo, who shared their initials, and their relationship to their native cities, Prague and Mexico City).

After that introduction come the numerous colorplates of the works (many paintings, portraits, landscapes, self-portraits, still-lifes), each one accompanied by an essay written by a different personality (writer, art historian, critic, essayist)who gives his or her own personal views on the particular work he or she was assigned to comment and describe. This choice of making this book a literary study of Frida Kahlo's paintings,more than a mere exhibition catalogue based on art historical references, undoubtedly makes for good reading and sheds a different light on the works. Unfortunately, the quality of the reproductions is poor, which is why I only give it three stars.