Berlin/ Mexico City   09-08-2010

Frida Kahlo + Diego Rivera 1932 - foto - Carl Van Vechten / Wikipedia

Visitors queued for many hours this Friday evening to view a hugely successful Berlin exhibition of art by Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), in the last days of the show’s closing weekend – some arrived in front of the museum as early as 0600 am with some having brought sleeping bags!

Queues stretched for about 200m in front of the ‘Martin Gropius Bau’ building, where the exhibition has been running for the last 4 months.

There were 5 hour waiting times to even each the cash desks, and another 2 hours to actually get in to view the Kahlo’s colourful paintings and photographs.

The museum has lengthened its hours to deal with the surge in demand, allowing visitors into the exhibition until 10 pm – about 200,000 have thus far seen the exhibit.

This Berlin Frida Kahlo retrospective, encompassed 150 works and was the largest collection of Kahlo’s work ever to be shown in Germany.

Frida Kahlo de Rivera [ 1907 – 1954] was a Mexican painter,  perhaps best known for her self-portraits – Kahlo’s work is known for its intense and vibrant colors and is celebrated in Mexico as emblematic of national and indigenous tradition.

Feminists have championed her work for its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.

Mexican culture and Amerindian cultural tradition figure prominently in her work, which has sometimes been characterized as Naïve art or ‘folk art’ and  has  even been described as ‘surrealist’.

Frida Kahlo – Wikipedia

Wikipedia provided  most of the folowing biographical information about Frida Kahlo;

The artist, born 1907 to a German photographer and his indigenous Mexican wife, is known for her self-portraits which often bore evidence of her turbulent life. Kahlo never fully recovered from a bus accident aged 18, and had a troubled relationship with the other Mexican world known artist Diego Rivera.

Kahlo had a stormy but passionate marriage with the prominent Mexican artist Diego Rivera – both were life long communists and supported revolutionary movements internationally and in Mexico.

She suffered lifelong health problems, many of which stemmed from a traffic accident in her teenage years in which a bus in which she was travelling ran head-long into a tram.  

As a young artist, Kahlo approached the Mexican painter, Diego Rivera, whose work she admired, asking him for advice about pursuing art as a career. He recognized her talent and her unique expression as truly special and uniquely Mexican. He encouraged her artistic development and began an intimate relationship with Frida. They were married in 1929, despite the disapproval of Frida’s mother.

Their marriage was often tumultuous. Kahlo and Rivera had fiery temperaments and had numerous extramarital affairs. The openly bisexual Kahlo had affairs with both men and women, including Josephine Baker;Rivera knew of and tolerated her relationships with women, but her relationships with men made him jealous.

For her part, Kahlo was furious when she learned that Rivera had an affair with her younger sister, Cristina. The couple eventually divorced in November 1939, but remarried in December 1940. Their second marriage was as turbulent as the first.

See also:

 http://www.museumsportal-berlin.de/museen/museum-details/martin-gropius-bau.html