La Esmeralda Frida Kahlo La Esmeralda Art School Mexico City
Carte du jour
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera
from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Drove 25 Jun – 23 Oct 2016
At dwelling house
Frida Kahlo, 'Self-portrait with braid', 1941
La Casa Azul was the business firm where Frida Kahlo was born, where she lived with her married man Diego Rivera, and where she died.
Casa Azul and the garden she designed for it would become Frida's domestic haven and the heart of her artistic milieu.
In the Mexico City suburb of Coyoacán, the house was filled non simply with international artists, but with film stars from Hollywood and United mexican states, intellectuals and political activists.
EnlargeGuillermo Zamora, 'Frida and Diego, Coyoacán', 1937
Frida and Diego moved in to Casa Azul after Frida'southward parents died, but earlier and then, they had already made an of import contribution to Mexican architecture.
In 1931, Frida and Diego engaged the pioneering modernist architect Juan O'Gorman to blueprint them a business firm and studio in San Ángel.
The avant-garde O'Gorman built them what was to go a significant – at the time, controversial – edifice, combining Mexican vernacular motifs with the rationalist or functionalist approach championed by Le Corbusier.
The light and airy double house was a 'his and hers' of two minimal blocks. The big white and dark pink block was Diego'south studio, and the bright blue smaller house, linked by a bridge, was Frida'due south infinite.
EnlargeSuperlative Photograph, 'Diego and Frida in NYC', 1933
Late in 1933 when they returned to Mexico from the United states of america, Frida and Diego took up residence at the O'Gorman firm in San Ángel.
Though Diego would keep using the studio, in 1941 afterward Frida's father died, the Riveras moved out of their twin houses and in to Casa Azul.
Afterward all the difficulties of their own relationship, with its year-long separation, divorce and remarriage, information technology was at Casa Azul that they found some stability – and made a home.
EnlargeFlorence Arquin, 'Untitled (Frida Kahlo in Coyoacán, United mexican states)', c1940
Frida'south first act at Casa Azul was to pigment the traditional whitewashed firm the same brilliant cobalt blueish she'd enjoyed in San Ángel. It was a colour Mexican folklore held would ward off evil spirits.
She redesigned her mother'due south more than typical heart-class garden, creating an open courtyard for living in nighttime and day and adding ponds and fountains.
EnlargeDiego Rivera, 'Landscape with cacti', 1931
Frida introduced indigenous plants such every bit agaves, aloes, yuccas and cactus. She also planted jasmines and jacarandas, to create a lush and inviting space that she filled with pre-Hispanic sculptures, ceramics and objects.
Casa Azul became an extension of Frida'southward creative practice and of her ain personal manner.
OverstateFrida Kahlo, 'Self-portrait with monkeys', 1943
Frida and Diego kept a menagerie of unusual pets at Casa Azul.
There was the tame eagle, Gertrude Caca Blanca, named for the white droppings it left throughout the courtyard.
Then there were the monkeys: the spider monkey Fulang Chang that Diego gave her (who became famous after appearing in one of Frida's self-portraits) and i called Caimito de Guayabal, later a kind of guava.
EnlargeFritz Henle, 'Frida in front of studio with monkey, Coyoacán', 1943
For the Aztecs, the monkey was a symbol of fertility, dance and the arts – as well as a symbol of lust.
Then in that location was the large male Amazon parrot, Bonito, or 'cute one', who used to get drunk on tequila and swear like a trooper.
EnlargeLola Alvarez Bravo, 'Frida Kahlo', 1944
But it was Frida's native Mexican Xoloitzcuintli dogs that were her favourite pets.
The Aztecs saw these small hairless dogs equally guides to the afterlife. Their name comes from the Aztec god Xólotl and the Nahuatl give-and-take for domestic dog, itzcuintli.
OverstateHector Garcia, 'Frida Kahlo with Itzcuintli Canis familiaris', 1952
Her favourite domestic dog, Señor ('Mr') Xólotl, became legendary, making an appearance in several paintings including i of her nigh famous, The Honey Cover of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Diego, Me, and Señor Xólotl 1949.
Diego was so angry with Señor Xólotl once when he peed on several freshly painted watercolours, that he well-nigh killed him – but the cute piffling dog'south wagging tail and imploring eyes saved him only in time.
EnlargeBernard Silberstein, 'Frida with objects on shelves', c1940
Over the years Frida filled the lively and always-changing space with folk art and popular curios including the skulls and huge papier-mâché effigies of Judas from the Day of the Expressionless celebrations – even a small pinkish pyramid covered in Aztec idols.
Frida also grew native plants for the table – corn, prickly pears and pitahayas (dragon fruits). Some of these would turn upward in her tardily yet-lifes.
Reflecting on their life at Casa Azul, Frida once said: 'How we painted the house and the Mexican article of furniture, all that influenced my painting a lot … I began to make paintings with backgrounds and Mexican things in them.'
EnlargeDiego Rivera, 'Emmy Lou Packard and Frida Kahlo in Coyoacán', 1941
At Casa Azul, Frida and Diego hosted the who'southward who of Mexico'southward intellectual and cultural aristocracy. They also greeted guests from effectually the earth who, in the 1920s and 30s, flocked to Mexico as an exciting, progressive place to be.
They entertained a remarkable group of friends including: picture stars like 'Cantinflas'; pic directors like the Russian Arcady Boytler; Costa Rican singer Chavela Vargas; Guatemalan author Luis Cardoza y Aragón; the Chilean Pablo Neruda and French surrealist André Breton.
Art patrons such as Eduardo Morillo Safa and the Gelmans came, also every bit an endless stream of artists from British sculptor Henry Moore to close friends Alice Rahon and Emmy Lou Packard.
OverstateFlorence Arquin, 'Untitled (Frida Kahlo in wheel chair with sun umbrella)', c1950
Maybe the near famous guest at Casa Azul was one of the leaders of the Russian revolution – by then exiled by Stalin – Leon Trotsky.
Trotsky and his wife Natalia Sedova were granted aviary in Mexico and came to stay at Casa Azul for ii years.
Some of their guests, like pic stars Paulette Goddard, Delores Del Rio and Maria Felix, were Diego'south lovers. Others – of both sexes, and including Trotsky – were Frida'south.
Rumour has information technology that one of her lovers, the sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi, climbed an orange tree to escape Diego Rivera's gun-wielding wrath.
That same tree still grows at Casa Azul today.
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Source: https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/artboards/frida-kahlo-diego-rivera/at-home/item/cy8ad5/
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