Time is Art

Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón de Rivera

July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954

Frida Kahlo has intrigued me since I was a child. She was the second female artist I recognized, after Georgia O’Keefe, when I saw her work in a museum in Fort Worth, Texas. It was her poignant portrayal of pain that shocked me and made me aware of a new aspect of life I hadn’t considered. Of course this was a very marked aspect of herself that she dealt with through out her life.  As a teenager she was in a streetcar accident that fractured her spine, pelvis, collarbones and forced her to wear full torso body casts and be in bed for much of her life. She also suffered in a relationship with Diego Rivera, a famous muralist that was 20 years older that her and was know for his filandering. They were in love and overcome many obstacles, but not without sadness that you see expressed in her art.

Kahlo in Deigo Rivera Mural, "Panamerican Unity

Frida Kahlo was painted in this mural in 1940 by Diego Rivera. The couple had recently divorced when he came up to San Francisco to participate in Art in Action. During the World Faire held on Treasure Island that year, he painted this fresco which was later transferred to San Francisco City College.  The couple remarried shortly afterwards and they lived in a specially designed house with a bridge between the two separate parts.

This is a painting of Frida’s father who took many pictures of her growing up and encouraged her as an artist. She had a multicultural background. Her father was a Hungarian Jew and her mother was of Mexican and Native Indian decent.

Frida is most famous for her self portraits which give us a glimpse of what her life may have been like at the time. While she didn’t recieve much fame during her life, she is now the subject of a major movie and her image is found everywhere in gift shops and museums around the world.

I especially appreciate her visceral images of nature and was struck by this painting I orginally saw in the Kimball Museum at age 8.

She and Diego were very political and actually housed the soviet refugee Leon Trotsky. They actively held communist party meetings in there home and had a very lively social life In 1953 she had her first and only Solo Exposition in Mexico. Doctors orders were to stay in bed so she had her bed delivered in an ambulance so she could attend the opening.

“I suffered two grave accidents in my life…One in which a streetcar knocked me down and the other was Diego.

“I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.”

Leonora Carrington is a Mexican Surrealist Artist who was born in Britian in 1917 and died this year, 2011. She met artist Max Ernst in London and escaped the NAZI occupation of Paris she fled to Mexico City. She is one of the top three female surrealist artists of all time and remained in Mexico for the rest of her life.

Her paintings are very detailed and they portray a secret or obscured aspect of the world. She uses many symbols and ritual shapes to express the mystical order and activities in the universe that most people do not notice. She was very well educated in europe but left it all to pursue art and express her point of view.

She wrote and illustrated this children’s book in 1977 and she also made sculptures and masks for theatre.

“You may not believe in magic but something very strange is happening at this very moment. Your head has dissolved into thin air and I can see the rhododendrons through your stomach. It’s not that you are dead or anything dramatic like that, it is simply that you are fading away and I can’t even remember your name.”
-Leonora Carrington The Hearing Trumpet