Frida Kahlo Diego Rivera And Mexican Modernism From The Jacques And Natasha Gelman Collection
Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR – To June 5
This nationally traveling exhibition highlights the Mexican Modernist art movement, celebrating two artists whose life stories and creative innovations were influential for generations. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera were central figures in a vibrant artistic renaissance that began to flourish in the 1920s, following the Mexican Revolution.
The married couple had many peers who were among a bigger picture of artists, activist and writers who considered the social, political and cultural potential of their work to shape national identity. Among their contemporaries were Manuel and Lola Álvarez Bravo, María Izquierdo, Carlos Mérida, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rufino Tamayo and other well-known creatives whose works are included in this exhibition.
Kahlos artistic trajectory began while she was confined to bed after a tragic accident that fractured her pelvis and spine at the age of 18. She painted self-portraits during her recovery and continued to look inward and draw from personal experience throughout her career. The artists raw emotional style resulted from intense self-reflection, and often her art would process her pain. Some of her most iconic and revered portraits are part of this show.
Portland Art Museum Scores A Rare View Not Just Of Frida Kahlo But The Interconnected History Of Mexican Modernism
Landscape with CactiCameron Hawkey
Standing in front of Landscape with Cacti, a massive landscape oil painting that muralist Diego Rivera painted in 1931, feels like standing with friends in happy companyif your friends happen to be five-feet-tall cacti on canvas. They meander over a sunny hill, prickly arms open in greeting.
I found refuge in this golden-yellow landscape as a balm against the past two years of pandemic and necessary social distancing. It has not been easy to step back inside a museum. However the Portland Art Museum s new show, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism feels well managed and mercifully spacious.
Due to a system of time slot visitation windows, theres no crowding. And while we all surely miss museum snacks, that means theres no reason to drop mask and pretend dining indoors makes sense.
There is both optimism and mystery in the sparingly-told exhibition of Mexican Modernism. The art is lucid, yet stories loom between descriptions. This exhibition is a great jumping off point to the extensive history hinted at on their walls.
Rivera is, of course, the world-renowned muralist husband of the now-even-more-famous painter Frida Kahlo. Within the exhibit we see work from Kahlo’s father, Guillermo Kahlo, photographer for deposed Mexican dictator Porforio Diaz. In a series of lithographs by José Clemente Orozco, a contemporary muralist, we also see the Zapatistas, the guerilla army who deposed Diaz during the Mexican Revolution.
Frida Kahlo Diego Rivera Y El Modernismo Mexicano
de la Colección de Jacques y Natasha Gelman
19 de febrero del 2022 5 de junio del 2022
Iniciando el 19 de febrero del 2022, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera y el Modernismo Mexicano de la Colección de Jacques y Natasha Gelman es una exploración fascinante del movimiento cultural vanguardista en México a inicios del siglo XX. Reúne más de 150 obras, incluyendo pinturas y obras sobre papel coleccionadas por Jacques y Natasha Gelman, así como fotografías y vestuario de época. La exhibición presenta obras valiosas de los aclamados artistas Frida Kahlo y Diego Rivera en el contexto más amplio del modernismo mexicano, incluyendo obras de Manuel y Lola Álvarez Bravo, Miguel Covarrubias, Gunther Gerzso, María Izquierdo, Carlos Mérida, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Juan Soriano, Rufino Tamayo, entre otros. La relación cercana de los Gelman con esta comunidad se revela por la cantidad de retratos que sus amigos artistas hicieron de ellos, los cuales se encuentran en la exhibición. Una selección de fotografías relacionadas con Kahlo, Rivera y su legado perpetuo de un listado global de artistas, incluyendo a Lucienne Bloch, Imogen Cunningham, Juan Guzmán, Graciela Iturbide, Nickolas Muray, Edward Weston, y Guillermo Kahlo , ayudarán a esbozar nuestra percepción sobre estos estimados pintores.
Creation of the WILD WOMANMagdalena Cape is supported by the Portland Art Museum, the Meriwether Group, Otiima and Scarlet Chamberlin Styling Co.
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Frida Kahlo Diego Rivera And Mexican Modernism
from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection
Opening February 19, 2022, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection is a fascinating exploration of the Avant-Garde cultural movement in Mexico in the early 20th century. Featuring over 150 works, including paintings and works on paper collected by Jacques and Natasha Gelman alongside photographs and period clothing, the exhibition presents cherished works by iconic artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in the broader context of Mexican Modernism, including artwork by Manuel and Lola Álvarez Bravo, Miguel Covarrubias, Gunther Gerzso, María Izquierdo, Carlos Mérida, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Juan Soriano, Rufino Tamayo and others. The Gelmans close relationship with this community is underscored by the number of portraits of them made by their artist friends in the exhibition. Photographs related to Kahlo, Rivera, and their enduring legacy by a global roster of artists including Lucienne Bloch, Imogen Cunningham, Juan Guzmán, Graciela Iturbide, Nickolas Muray, Edward Weston, and Guillermo KahloFridas fatherhelp round out our understanding of these beloved painters.
Organized by the Vergel Foundation and MondoMostre in collaboration with the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura . Coordinated for Portland Art Museum by Sara Krajewski, The Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.
Explosive Frida Kahlo Diego Rivera Exhibit At The Portland Art Museum
I remember a student came to me once after a particularly intense class. He held his head and said, Mrs. Jensen, my head is exploding!
Thats how I feel after an extended visit to the Portland Art Museums big traveling exhibit, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Mexican Modernism. My eyes are pinwheels of explosive color, my brain is scrambling to organize new information about everyones favorite artist couple, my heart is trembling from intimate images of huge Diego tender with tiny Frida who stares out at the world with a ferociousness rooted in her unfathomable pain.
If you go, and I urge you to do so, think about what you want to see, and organize yourself accordingly because this show is sprawled across multiple galleries, hallways and floors of the museum. If, like me, your primary interest is in Frida, after entering the show, walk quickly all the way through and down the stairs because she is mostly in the final gallery. Then work your way backwards to Diego Rivera, then the first chamber is focused on their contemporaries. Or if your primary interest is in art history and social and cultural content for these two famous painters, start at the beginning. I only mention this because by the time I got to Frida, well, Mrs. Jensen, my brain was exploding!
All the iconic self-portraits are there, Fridas monkey, Diegos calla lilies. Theres just so much to see, think and feel. If you feel like your brain is exploding when you leave, you were warned!
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Frida Kahlo Diego Rivera And Mexican Modernism In The Usa And Their Worldwide Contributions
Register on Zoom and watch on Facebook Live
Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism in the USA and Their Worldwide Contributions is a look at the widespread legacy of Mexicos avant-garde artists, presented in conjunction with Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection. Join Portland-based artist and educator, Hector H Hernandez, in a lecture that reflects upon this movements influence within the United States, along with the artistic contributions of Kahlo and Rivera within US art circles. Drawing upon his own art practice, mural painting, and Chicanx identity, Hernandez considers the ways in which Mexican Modernist artists departed from European models of creative expression to forge a unique voice that responds to such European hegemony and echoes through the work of todays artists.
Mr. Hernandez first experience painting murals was achieved in Mexico City while studying a program in Social Anthropology. In that opportunity Mr. Hernandez participated as collaborator for two murals under the guidance of the Mexican master painter Arnold Belkin. This experience allowed him to follow a path to community murals from the teachings of the Mexican school of painting. Since then, his academic training gained in painting murals has focused on community murals with an academic background, so Mr. Hernandez may reach new generations of painters and community artists.
An Ideal Addition: Murals And Mexican Modernism
Were not special. Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism the big show thats at the Portland Art Museum through June 5th is a traveling show. The current iteration has been circulating around the U.S. since at least 2018, and similar shows have circulated previously. Ive heard from people who have seen this show in Seattle, Albuquerque, and Nashville. From Portland, Frida and friends will venture to Tulsa to open in July. Judging by the throngs of visitors, there is no issue in getting people through the door. School programs seem to be in a particularly full swing after the pandemic lull.
There is, however, something special happening at PAM as part of this exhibition. It isnt among the paintings, prints, photographs, or recreated costumes, but instead in the atrium before you enter the exhibition: two murals that were painted live, on site, for the purpose of the exhibition, one helmed by Hector Hernandez and one executed by the collective Ideal PDX. An installation of clothing by the collaborative duo Wild Woman rounds out the space.
Diego and Frida Are Here
A corollary to this was that the murals were a rejection of another type of art, art for an elite social and economic class. In his 1922 manifesto A Declaration of Social, Political, and Aesthetic Principles, David Alfaro Siqueiros proclaimed:
Portrait of Mrs. Natasha GelmanLandscape with CactiDiego and Friday Are Here MetamorphosisDiego and Frida Are Here
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Mexican Modernism Was More Than Frida Kahlo And Diego Rivera
Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism
PORTLAND, OR The preview for the Portland Art Museums Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism was a polite affair. The ample gallery rooms were quiet, the only noise the faint hush of affluent viewers murmuring to each other, shaking hands. The 150-artwork show was most recently exhibited at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, and displays the tastes of Jacques and Natasha Gelman, late philanthropists from Eastern Europe who relocated to Mexico in the 1940s and began collecting Mexican art. The exhibition, which also features portraits of the Gelmans by Kahlo and Rivera, reflects this intimate connection.
Clearly invested in the Kahlo family unit, the exhibition also puts on view documentary photographs by Guillermo Kahlo, Fridas German father. A portrait of one of Kahlos sisters, Cristina, by Diego Rivera, hangs prominently in the upper gallery, stoking the drama of the infamous affair between Cristina and Diego that led to Frida and Diegos temporary separation.
Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism
As a traveling exhibition, one can assume that the museum had little say in the works selected. There is, however, great attention shown to the exhibitions framing, especially the wall texts. This framing serves a successfully didactic function that moves the viewer through the different stages and impact of the Mexican Modernist period.
With Frida Kahlo And Diego Rivera In Spotlight Portland Exhibit Tells Story Of Mexican Modernism
Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection
People who knew Frida Kahlo said she had a deep voice, laughed loudly and swore. Like other women of her era, she painted her nails red and knew her way around a good red lipstick, but she encouraged her heavy unibrow and didnt bleach her mustache. She wore her hair in braids and ribbons coiled around her head, and she wore emphatic jewelry large necklaces, earrings and a lot of rings whose design and materials firmly connected her with her own and her countrys Indigenous heritage. Her clothing, which also drew from traditional Mexican styles, was voluminous, colorful, exuberant.
So, too, her art. Its not loud, per se many of her paintings are small but it takes all the air in the room.
Which brings me to my next observation about this traveling show that was coordinated for the Portland Art Museum by Sara Krajewski. Theres a lot of photography.
Photography helps set the stage, said Krajewski. They were the leading photographers, but their work helps us to see who these people were. The photos put them in their context.
The exhibition is divided into 12 bite-sized sections over two floors that loosely cover the cultural and political foment of Mexico in the decades that followed the Mexican Revolution, which lasted from 1910 to 1920.
When: Through June 5
Where: Portland Art Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave.
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Frida Is Here: Mural Painting Reflections By Ideal Pdx
Register on Zoom or join on Facebook Live
Join IDEAL PDX artists Jessica Lagunas, William Hernandez, Romina del Castillo, José Solis and Daniel Santollo in a panel discussion that talks about the process and the reflections that inspired the artists to create their mural for Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Mexican Modernism. Established in 2010, IDEAL PDX is a collaborative group of Latino artists that accomplish new projects displaying individual Visual and Performing Artists in the Northwest. In creating their mural in the Museums Schnitzer Courtyard, the artists envision Frida Kahlo and Diego coming from the Mictlan the Mexican-infra world, to visit the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Arriving to the Multnomah, Cathlamet, Clackamas, Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla, and other tribe territories, they bring with them their beloved México. Like in a dream, Frida and Diego open and enlighten their way to the PNW to explore other forms of life and see themselves within the peoples lives. This panel discussion highlights the artists special attention to collecting and studying details of Frida and Diegos life together and their process of reflecting these details in their mural work.
Broadcast: Thursday May 19
Pieces from the Wild Woman collaboration are on display at the Portland Art Museum.
courtesy of Myriam Marcela De Anda
Wild Woman is an art collaboration that includes a luxury clothing collection and highlights womens empowerment. The pieces are on display at the Portland Art Museum in conjunction with the museums Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism exhibit. We hear more about the work from creators Myriam Marcela De Anda and Laura Renée Maier.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: Five years ago the Portland-based fashion designer Myriam Marcela De Anda teamed up with the Seattle born New York-based textile artist Laura Renée Maier. They worked back and forth. De Anda creates high fashion garments and Maier provides meticulously-embroidered designs. They call their project Wild Woman. Now their latest collaboration is on display as part of the Portland Art Museums Mexican Modernism exhibit. It is a regal cape inspired by a Frida Kahlo lithograph about her miscarriage. Laura Renée Maier and Myriam Marcela De Anda, welcome.
Laura Renée Maier: Thank you. David.
Myriam Marcela De Anda: Thank you.
Miller:
Miller: Well, Ive seen it because I went to the museum and Ive been studying up for this, but Ill let Laura describe it in a second. But as a friend and collaborator, can you describe her work and why you were drawn to reach out to her to collaborate with?
De Anda: Shes used to it.
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Romina Del Castillo Per
Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. Pablo Picasso
My desire to create art stems from the memories of my childhood in my native country, Perú. But this is something I wouldnt understand until much later. I lived in Lima, Perú in my grandparents apartment. During the 1950s, my grandparents migrated to the capital from the Andean region of Andahuaylas in search of a better life. But in their new home, they also encountered the struggles, and sometimes indignities, of being provincial in the big city.
Soon enough, at the age of 6, I found myself on my first of many migrations. This one was with my mother to our southern neighboring country, Chile with the promise of prosperity and stability no hyperinflation, no terrorism, no blackouts, no bombs. My younger self was blissfully unaware of Perús perpetual internal political conflict, and I happily continued to visit my grandparents, spending my entire summers back in their apartment.
Lima was the grey, as we say, because of the endless coastal fog that covers it, but to me, it was full of color and life. The busyness and chaos of the city, full of colors and patterns set amongst a concrete jungle, was a sensory overload to my young self. Fluorescent paint seemed everywhere. The mantas or aguayos woven fabrics, which are seen on display at markets and adorning everyday people, had the most intense polychromatic combinations.
Maimantataj Kanki
