In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907–1954), the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), will present a major exhibition of the artist’s paintings spanning her career. Curated by art historian and world-renowned Kahlo biographer Hayden Herrera and Walker Associate Curator Elizabeth Carpenter,
Frida Kahlo
premieres at the Walker October 27, 2007–January 20, 2008, before traveling to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and SFMOMA.
Few artists have captured the public’s imagination with the force of Frida Kahlo. Making clear her powerful influence on artists working today,
Frida Kahlo
will include some 50 paintings from the very beginning of her career in 1926 to the year of her death in 1954. While concentrating on Kahlo’s hauntingly seductive and often brutal self-portraits, it also will include those particular portraits and still lifes which amplify her own sense of identity. As Kahlo’s artistic practice progressed, her images grew in confidence and complexity, reflecting both her private obsessions and political concerns.
In addition to the paintings, the exhibition will feature iconic images of Frida Kahlo by preeminent photographers of the period from the Vicente Wolf Photography Collection as well as personal snapshots with family and friends from the artist’s own photo albums, some of which have never before been published or exhibited. The photographs pose fascinating questions about an artist who was both the consummate manufacturer of her own image and a beguiling and willing photographic subject.
A major publication with newly commissioned essays, bibliography, exhibition history, and illustrated timeline, will accompany the exhibition.
Exhibition Tour
Premiere
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
October 27, 2007–January 20, 2008
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Mid-February–Mid-May, 2008
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California
June 14–September 16, 2008