Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics, and Painting features more than 120 paintings and drawings by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, including an important group of photographs by artists who captured the couple's shared passion for each other and for Mexico's revolutionary culture during the 1920s and 1930s.

This exhibition is co-organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and the Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City, in association with The Vergel Foundation, The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of Mexican Art, and Galeria Arvil.

"The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration." –Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907, in Coyoacán on the outskirts of Mexico City. Her father, the German-born Guillermo Kahlo, had immigrated to Mexico in 1891, while her mother, Matilde Calderón y Gonzalez, was of indigenous (Amerindian) and Spanish ancestry.

As a young girl, Kahlo excelled academically and planned to study medicine. But her life changed on September 17, 1925, when a city bus she was riding collided with a trolley car. Her extensive injuries included a broken spinal column, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, and an iron handrail had pierced her abdomen. These injuries kept Kahlo bedridden for more than a year, during which time she began to teach herself to paint to alleviate her boredom.

Kahlo was already a member of the Mexican Communist Party when she met Diego Rivera, who was at the time painting his murals for the Public Ministry of Education. Rivera encouraged Kahlo to pursue her painting. Although he was twenty years her elder, a relationship developed between Rivera and Kahlo and they married in 1929.

Their marriage was turbulent. Both had extramarital affairs, including Kahlo's relationship with the Communist leader Leon Trotsky. After Kahlo learned of her husband's affair with her younger sister Cristina in 1939, the couple divorced, but remarried a year later. Kahlo died on July 13, 1954, at the age of 47. Today, a pre-Columbian urn holding her ashes is on display in her former home, The Blue House, in Coyoacán.

"Every good composition is above all a work of abstraction. All good painters know this. But the painter cannot dispense with subjects altogether without his work suffering impoverishment." –Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera was born in Guanajuato, Mexico, in 1886. He studied painting and in 1907, through the sponsorship of the governor of the State of Veracruz, Mexico, moved to Madrid to study painting. By 1909 Diego moved to Paris and spent much of the next fourteen years there. Leaving Paris when World War I broke out, he traveled around Europe, including southern France and Italy, and was influenced by the work of Picasso, Cézanne, and Renoir. When he began to study Renaissance frescoes in Italy, however, he knew he had found his medium.

With a vision for the future of fresco and a strong belief in public art, in 1921 Rivera returned to Mexico, where he soon found work with the new revolutionary government. That fame earned him many commissions. Diego met Frida Kahlo in 1928 and married her the following year. They had a passionate and tumultuous relationship. Each had numerous extramarital affairs, divorcing in 1939 but quickly remarrying in 1940.

In the 1930s Rivera made several trips to the United States, where he painted murals at the California School of Fine Arts, The American Stock Exchange Luncheon Club, and the Detroit Institute of the Arts. Another mural was commissioned for the Rockefeller Center in New York, but was destroyed before it was made public. In 1936 Rivera was instrumental in the defection of Leon Trotsky from the Soviet Union to Mexico, after which Trotsky lived with Frida and Diego for a time.

Rivera was devastated by Kahlo's death in 1954 and became ill not long after her death. Although weak, he continued to paint, and even remarried. He died of heart failure in 1957.

The Amistad Cycle

This is the description. Young Man with a Fountain Pen
This is the description. Portrait of Natasha Gelman
This is the description. The Agrarian Leader Zapata
This is the description. The Watermelons
This is the description. Self-Portrait with Wide-Brimmed Hat
This is the description. Flower Day
This is the description. The Bride Frightened at Seeing Life Opened
This is the description. Henry Ford Hospital
This is the description. Portrait of Luther Burbank

The Founding Cycle

This is the description. Diego and Frida, 1929–1944
This is the description. The Bus
This is the description. Self-Portrait with Monkey

Explore select paintings by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo from Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics, and Painting. Click on an image to learn more.

Watch these two videos to learn more about Frida and Diego.

 
 

The High Museum of Art is offering a wide range of programming during this exhibition. Click an event below to learn more.

Exhibition Sponsors

This exhibition is co-organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta and the Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City in association with The Vergel Foundation, and The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of Mexican Art, Galería Arvil.



Image Credits

All art by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera is © 2013 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

 
Resources loading. Please wait.