There has been a great deal of media hype about Frida Kahlo recently. I believe that it is due in part to two major exhibitions dedicated to her in 2008.

The biggest exhibition is the Frida Kahlo Centennial in Mexico City scheduled for the summer. This large-scale exhibition will include a retrospective of her work at the
Palacio de Bellas and an exhibition of her personal memorabilia at the Casa Azul, a former home of the artist. And the Philadephia Museum of Art is currently showing a selected collection of her smaller works.

For those of us who are unable to make that special trip to either Mexico or the United States, there are some art resources in the Art, Design and Media Library (ADML) that
could help enhance an appreciation of an artist whose unique vision of art is intricately woven with her own tragic life.

One such resource is a biographical documentary of the artist’s life. This documentary is wonderful in many ways as it gives an excellent background to her early years as an
intelligent and self-assertive young woman bound for medical school.

The documentary on the artist’s life also clearly shows how a near-fatal bus accident would “forever changed the course of her life.” It was her confinement to the bed during her recuperation period that Frida Kahlo took up the brush to paint. We learned that her mother had a mirror installed at the top of her bed canopy to enable her to paint her own image as movements were confining and difficult for her.

This is but a start to the many self-portraits that Frida Kahlo would paint in the course of her life. They bear powerful testimony not only to the physical pain caused by wounds that were never completely healed from the bus crash as much as a moving visual commentary of her turbulent marriage to the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera.

Biography : Frida Kahlo is available in the Art, Design and Media Library (ADML). Call Number: ND259.K33F898

Please also click here for a full review of the “Frida Kahlo” exhibition by the New York Times at the Philadelphia Musuem of Art.