Frida Kahlo | Diego Rivera

May 2, 2003 | 6.30 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

Frida Kahlo ( Col. 62 mins.)

Frida Kahlo (1907–54) began to paint in 1925 while recovering from a streetcar accident that left her permanently disabled. She underwent more than thirty excruciating operations in the course of her life, and many of her approximately two hundred paintings directly relate to her experiences with physical pain. They also chronicle her turbulent relationship with Diego Rivera, the legendary Mexican painter and muralist. She shared Diego’s faith in communism and passionate interest in the indigenous cultures of Mexico. During this period “Mexicanismo,” the fervent embrace of pre-Hispanic Mexican history and culture, gave great currency to the notion of native roots. At the same time, being seen as a primitive provided an avenue for recognition for a few women artists. Her autobiographical paintings are marked by a brutal realism, intense and depicts her own personal pain, fear, anguish, loss – as well as defiance of all these, and even joy. For Diego Rivera, her painting “was the greatest proof of the renaissance of the art of Mexico”.

Diego Rivera (Col 35 mins.)

Diego Rivera (1886-1957) a national icon in Mexico, ranks among the most significant artists of the 20th century. He fused the innovations of European modernism with the traditions of Mexico’s pre-Columbian past and its indigenous peoples. Diego Rivera’s life comprises one of the great histories of 20th-century art, politics, and the quest for validation of indigenous American cultures. Rivera helped to define the terms of the Mexican-American cultural dialogue that continues to this day. Over the course of his career, he shifted from easel paintings addressed to art connoisseurs to monumental murals designed to influence the widest audience possible. He aspired to create not merely public art, but truly populist art possessing the visual and rhetorical power to change the world. Notwithstanding his reputation for pungent socio-political commentary, he was fundamentally an optimist who envisioned a utopian destiny for mankind.