FLINT, MICHIGAN.- The Flint Institute of Arts presents “Frida Kahlo: Portraits of an Icon,” on view through November 9, 2003. The exhibition is sponsored by Bank One and co-sponsored by Mi Gente Magazine and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts. An exhibition featuring more than 30 portraits of Frida Kahlo, spanning her trajectory from a precocious child to a famous artist, and providing a glimpse of the complex woman behind the façade she created. This exhibit, from the Throckmorton Gallery in New York City, showcases the work of renowned photographers of the twentieth century, including photographs taken by Imogen Cunningham, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and Kahlo’s husband, Diego Rivera.
The exhibition will include one-of-a-kind portraits taken by Kahlo’s lovers, close friends, and members of her family. Included in this group are images taken by her father, Guillermo Kahlo, who was a professional photographer, her lover Nickolas Muray, and her friends Lola and Manuel Alvarez Bravo, as well as a rare group of intimate snapshots taken by her husband, Diego Rivera. The exhibition is unique because of the inclusion of Guillermo Kahlo’s rare, early photographs, and those of renowned twentieth century photographers (who were also among Kahlo’s wide circle of friends) such as Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, Martin Munkacsi and Imogen Cunningham.
The images span Kahlo’s life beginning with a photograph of the self-possessed chubby four-year-old with her fistful of wilting roses and ending forty-two years later with the image of an emaciated, wasted figure on her deathbed dressed in Pre-Columbian finery prepared for the after life. Photographs of the period in between include images of Kahlo growing up, with friends, embracing Diego Rivera, painting in her studio and in bed, and posing with her pets, as well as many formal portraits in which she is dressed in traditional Mexican costume wearing Pre-Columbian jewelry. Works by leading photojournalists on assignment in Mexico for various publications such as Giselle Freund, Bernard Silberstein and Fritz Henle are also included in the exhibition. These images bring into focus Kahlo as the painter, the patient, the wife, the daughter, the lover and the friend. The images allow us to peer into her bedroom, sit at her table, visit her hospital room, wander into her garden and view her collections.
