Diego & Frida: Life Chronicles: Black, white and everything in between 

The Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, known for her paintings that vividly brought together the self and surreal, has been wholeheartedly embraced by all aspects of pop culture from fashion to film. The tragedies of her life and her refusal to be cowed down by them have caused her to be adopted as the patron saint of every minority to the extent that she has become mainstream.

For the many who remember her from Coco, there are many more inspired by her vibrant paintings, with their grasping roots keeping her anchored while allowing her to grow, the pre-Colombian motifs and folk art which she used to explore her identity and the magic realism with which she made sense of her treacherous body.

The duo in Mexico
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

There is good news for those who worship at the altar of Fridamania. Diego & Frida: Life Chronicles, a collection of 60 photographs, that tells the story of the original artistic power couple, Kahlo and Diego Rivera, is on display at gallery g on Lavelle Road, Bengaluru.

The exhibition, to commemorate the 212th anniversary of Mexican Independence, is presented by the Embassy of Mexico in India, in association with the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL) of Mexico and Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo.

In a time machine

The photos are reprints, the originals being on permanent display at the Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo in Mexico. Starting with pictures of Kahlo and Rivera’s parents, the exhibition marks important events in the couple’s life including their marriage in 1929, (which Kahlo’s mother described as being between an elephant and a dove) their visits to the United States of America where Rivera, a celebrated muralist, executed several commissions, to their deaths — Kahlo’s in 1954 at the age of 47 and Rivera three years later in 1957 at the age of 70.

The photograph of Kahlo aged four shows a charming, chubby little girl, while the one documenting her last public appearance on July 2, 1954, to protest US intervention in Guatemala, is especially poignant where an obviously suffering Kahlo in a wheelchair following the amputation of her right leg, is spiritedly joining the demonstration. Photographs of the couple’s many animals including dogs, monkeys and parrots, which found representation on Kahlo’s canvasses are part of the exhibition.  

The couple had a tempestuous relationship, divorcing in 1939 because of infidelities on both sides only to remarry the next year in 1940 in San Francisco. Kahlo and Rivera’s house, La Casa Azul, was a meeting place of artists and intellectuals, including León Trotsky, who Rivera persuaded the Mexican government to give asylum. Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Sedova, lived at La Casa Azul between 1937 and 1939. Trotsky and Kahlo also had a brief affair.

Chilling out in their abode known as “Blue House”

Kahlo had several health problems starting with the terrible accident that injured her pelvis and spine when she was 18. There is a beautiful photograph of Kahlo taken by her father, Guillermo Kahlo, a German-Mexican photographer, a year after the accident at the exhibition. There were also abortions, miscarriages and amputations all of which Kahlo unflinchingly rendered on canvas.

It would have been nice if there were some representations of Kahlo’s and Rivera’s work, but the photographs despite being reprints, manage to capture the force of nature that was Kahlo and the necessary bulwark that was Rivera.   

Diego & Frida: Life Chronicles is on display at gallery g, Lavelle Road, till October 10.