A retrospective of work by the
acclaimed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo opens at Milan's MUDEC on
February 1.
The 70 paintings, 40 drawings and 150 photographs on show aim
to go 'beyond the myth' of the feminist artist and icon, and
include numerous works never seen before.
One of these is 'Nina con collar', a 1929 portrait of an
assistant's daughter that only came to light when the sitter's
son put it up for auction.
It is also unusual to see the 1938 painting 'Self-portrait
with monkey' - Kahlo's first self-portrait painted on commission
from the then director of MOMA in New York and now featuring on
the exhibition poster - on display in Europe.
The big absentee is the 1933 painting 'Mi nascimiento',
bought by Madonna in 1990 and which the American singer has
refused to loan to the show.
"I wrote to Madonna to ask for the painting on loan and she
replied 'I never separate from mi dos ninas'," said curator
Diego Sileo in reference to 'Mi nascimiento' and a self-portrait
dating to 1946.
Visitors can instead admire the 1938 still life 'Pithayas',
begun in Mexico and completed in Paris where Kahlo travelled to
exhibit her work on the invitation of Andre' Breton.
Paintings such as this contribute to building a new narrative
about the Mexican artist "who we all like because we are all
neo-romantics and are moved by the woman who suffered and was
betrayed and sick, but here we have put the known story and life
events to one side to recount the artist Frida and not just the
pop icon," Sileo said.
To do this, the curator immersed himself in the archives of
Casa Azul, discovered in 2006 on the death of Diego Rivera's
patron Dolores Olmedo, to whom Frida's husband had left all his
possessions.
Here and in other archives Sileo found photographs of missing
paintings and other itsms of interest, including the Revlon
flask used by Frida to darken her eyebrows.
In fact the painter portrayed herself with a moustache and
joined eyebrows from 1933 onwards, playing up that rebellious
streak that contributed in no small way to her legend.
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