The exhibition is open until January 26.Continue reading
An exhibition of photographs from different periods of the world-famous Mexican painter’s life, Frida Kahlo – Her Photos, opened on Friday in Budapest at Mai Manó Ház.
At a press preview of the collection, on display in Hungary for the first time, Perla Labarthe Álvarez, director of the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City, said that the exhibition will showcase 241 previously unpublished photographs that Frida held in high esteem. After the artist’s death in 1954, her husband Diego Rivera donated their former home in Mexico City – known as the Blue House – to the Mexican people to turn it into a museum dedicated to Frida’s life and work.
However, a large part of the artist’s personal belongings – six thousand photographs, some drawings, letters, medicine, and clothes – were kept locked away in a bathroom for fifty years.
After the opening of the personal archive in 2003, the exhibition curator, photographer Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, selected 241 of the photographs found there. Since its launch in Mexico City in 2009, the collection has been seen by nearly one million people in 20 cities.
The exhibition is thematically divided into six sections:
Perla Labarthe Álvarez. Photo: MTI/Kovács Tamás
Photography always played an important role in Frida’s life, said the museum director. Her grandfather and father were professional photographers and she herself was passionate about this art. Some photographs on display here are like a family photo album.
The influence of the portraits taken by the photographer father is reflected in Frida Kahlo’s art,
Álvarez said.
The section “Frida’s Loves” captures people important to the artist, including her husband Diego Rivera, her sister Cristina, and her first love Alejandro Gómez Arias. The collection reflects the intimacy of the painter and her loved ones during her tormented life. The kiss prints and autographs on the pictures reveal the nature of the relationship with the people in the photos, the director noted.
The exhibition, open until January 12, was created by the Frida Kahlo Museum and the Anahuacalli Museum (Mexico).
Via MTI, Featured image: MTI/Kovács Tamás