Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting

Frida Kahlo (19071954) and Diego Riveras (18861957) legendary passion for each other and for Mexicos revolutionary culture during the 1920s and 1930s have made them among the twentieth centurys most famous artists. During their life together as a married couple, Rivera achieved prominence as a muralist artist, while Kahlos intimate paintings were embraced by the Surrealist movement and the Mexican art world--but neither were especially well known in the broader context of art and modernism. After their deaths in the 1950s, important retrospectives of Kahlos work enshrined her as one of the most significant women artists of the twentieth century, somewhat eclipsing Riveras international fame as Mexicos greatest muralist painter. Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting offers a new perspective on their artistic significance for the twenty-first century, one that shows how their paintings reflect both the dramatic story of their lives together and their artistic commitment to the transformative political and cultural values of post-revolutionary Mexico. Frida & Diego features newly photographed color reproductions of 75 paintings and works on paper by both Kahlo and Rivera, rarely reproduced archival photographs and new biographical information on the couple assembled by scholar Dot Tuer. It is published on the occasion of an exhibition assembled from three distinguished Mexican private collections on Mexican art, and presented at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the High Museum of Art Atlanta.