Frida Kahlo: The Painter And Her Work - Hardcover

Prignitz-Poda, Helga

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1891024957 ISBN 13: 9781891024955

Publisher: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc., 2004

Synopsis

When Frida Kahlo died in 1954, she left behind a slender oeuvre. It consists of 143 paintings of small size, rarely larger than 20 x 30 inches, many of them now considered icons of 20th century art, most of them self-portraits. The reasons for this ostensible narcissism were closely bound up with Kahlo's biography, with the country and epoch in which she grew up, and with her decidedly eccentric character. It was no coincidence that the major enigmatic minds of the 16th century, namely Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, were among her favorite painters. For Frida Kahlo never displayed her wounds directly--be it the physical wounds caused by accidents and illness, or the psychological inner wounds. Hers is a subtly enciphered symbolic language, rich in metaphors drawn from almost all the world's cultures. Aztec myths of creation, Far Eastern and Classical Greek mythology, and popular Catholic beliefs all mingle in Kahlo's pictures with Mexican folklore and the stuff of quotidian life, with Marx and Freud. Andr Breton, one of her many admirers among the European avant-garde, once described Kahlo's art as a "colored ribbon round a bomb." Exotic and explosive, sensuous and fascinatingly vital in terms of artistic statement, Kahlo's paintings shed a complex and often frightening light on her soul, her "inner reality," as she called it. If the incessant commercial marketing of Kahlo's paintings over the past decade has obscured a clear view of her extraordinary oeuvre, this present monograph attempts to make amends. Frida Kahlo: The Painter and Her Work returns to the heart, to 42 select masterpieces, reproduced in full and in detail. The painterly quality, the beauty, and the immense wealth of details in Kahlo's paintings is laid out before the reader's eyes, as is the abyss in which the artist found herself.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"I was considered a Surrealist. That is not right. I never painted dreams. What I depicted, was my reality." Our book zooms right into this reality, and it does so in a new and unusual way: presenting Frida Kahlo's paintings in a general view and in selected details, it reveals the wealth of stories and creatures hidden in her self-portraits; it makes tangible the life-long physical and spiritual pain endured by the artist; and it illustrates painterly skills and techniques reminiscent of old European masters.

About the Author:

Frida Kahlo (1907-1958 in Coyoacán, a suburb of Mexico City), took up painting after an accident at the age of 18 from which she continued to suffer for the rest of her life. A political and cultural activist married to Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, she became a legendary figurehead of new Mexican art and woman painting. Helga Prignitz-Poda is an art historian and freelance curator specializing in Mexican art. She is the co-editor of Frida Kahlo. Das Gesamtwerk.

About this edition

• Publisher: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1891024957
• ISBN 13: 9781891024955
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 280