Art history is a fascinating way to learn more about Mexico and the figures who shaped the nation — political, social, cultural. Through their interpretation of characters and events, the famed muralists — Diego Rivera, David Alfara Siqueiros, and Jose Clemente Orozco — gave definition to a new nation seeking to redefine itself post-1920 Revolution. We call this Mexican Muralism.
While I’m now in Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, I’m reflecting back to last weekend in Mexico City, where, in collaboration with my art historian friend Valeria, we led a group of nine participants from the USA through the historic center. Here is where a turbulent history is interpreted through art. We started on Thursday evening and ended on Sunday afternoon, packing it in, walking miles each day, absorbing a fascinating evolution.
Mexico is defined by many internal and external forces, mostly her on-going desire to reconcile the Spanish conquest with her indigenous origins. Embracing Mestizaje — blending indigenous roots with conquerors, occupiers and immigrants, is what makes Mexico unique among nations, and very different from her northern neighbors.
Rivera, who sat out the 1910-1920 Revolution, painting and making a name for himself in Europe, returned to Mexico City in 1921. Jose Vasconcelos, the first minister of education, recruited Rivera to paint the murals at the Secretariat de Educacion Publica (SEP), his first commission.
The murals of Rivera, Orozco and Siquieros are commentaries on national identity, statehood, oppression and power. The Rivera murals at SEP in particular were part of a national communication plan (aka propaganda) to embrace native culture and arts. Critics say Rivera’s murals are romantic and idealistic. His contemporaries, survivors of the Revolution, painted a more hopeless, violent vision, expressing their belief that the past must be destroyed in order to create a new order.
By Sunday, we move more deeply into the life and times of Frida Kahlo with a visit to Casa Azul, a stark contrast to the muralists.
Frida Kahlo was born in 1907, the year Rivera went to Europe as a young man. During her lifetime she was dwarfed literally and figuratively by her imposing husband. It wasn’t until after her death in 1954 at age 47, that she became the iconic figure she is today — representing women’s strength, pain, fortitude, perseverance, endurance.
We revere her because her art is self-expression. She painted emotion and the internal life. She was a participant, not an observer. She hid her deformities under extraordinary handmade Mexican clothing — popularizing the style, corseted beneath to hold her injured spine erect. Andre Breton called her surrealist. We call her survivor.
Our art history tour weaves the relationship between Diego and Frida with the times in which they lived and worked. We also examine the politics of Socialism and Communism in Mexico, how the Rivera’s gave sanctuary to Leon Trotsky, the idealism of young American artists like Pablo O’Higgins, Isamu Noguchi, and the Greenwood sisters — Marion and Grace, who were drawn to the movement. We see their deteriorating murals in an obscure market blocks from the city center.
We understand Mexico more now, how the creative stream of artistic energy here continues to express social and political inequalities, injustices, and discontent.
Here in Oaxaca, our beloved Maestro Francisco Toledo, carried the mantle of social justice art until he died in September 2019. Young graphic artists follow in the footsteps of the masters, use wood, linoleum block and metal plates to carve out images of truth to power. Mexico offers creative opportunity to any and all who choose to express themselves.
Note: If you put together a group of 5-6 people, I am happy to organize this experience over a long weekend in Mexico City.
at Abelardo Rodriguez Market
Details, Another View of Frida Kahlo at Casa Azul
In the last three years, I’ve probably visited Casa Azul, where Frida Kahlo was born and lived with Diego Rivera, over ten times. I come because I organize the art history study tour, Looking for Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
Frida Kahlo Calderon, daughter of Jewish Hungarian father and Oaxaquena mother
Can you get to Mexico City next weekend?
On this latest visit last Friday with a group from Australia and New Zealand, I served as a consultant for their leader who wanted a one-day quick immersion into Frida’s life for her group.
Frida’s father and mother, her portrait of them
I wondered: How do I continue to take photos of the same iconographic details of Frida and Diego’s life? The paint brushes. The photographs. The furniture. The folk art collection.
Detail of studio paint brushes, her strokes became weaker at the end
The pre-Hispanic ceramics and lava rock sculpture. The clothing. The frog urn that contains her ashes. The paintings she created out of pain. Reverence. Disappointment. Courage. Commitment to love and family. Passion.
Watermelons. Celebration of Life. Finished just before death.
Go to the details, I told myself. Captures the parts, not the whole. Focus on the brush strokes. The lace. The color. The shadows and reflections. The images of the men and women she loved.
Colored oil crayons, still neatly boxed, waiting. Ready.
Go to the details. Find the ribbons. Find the ribs of the plant leaves. The shape of flowers. The accoutrements of the corsets and built-up shoes to hide her deformities. The textures and reflections.
Palm ribs in the expansive garden, Casa Azul
She put such a strong, uplifting face to the world despite her injuries — physical and emotional.
She called Diego “Toad” and “Panza” — ashes contained within the frog jug.
This trip to Casa Azul was different for me and I used the experience to examine the infinite, small parts of life that we often scan over to take in the big picture.
Visceral, the insides of a gourd, like a fertile womb ready to give seed. But she couldn’t.
If you want to join me in Mexico City, Thursday, July 29, for a July 30 morning start to a three-day immersion into the murals, paintings and lives of Friday and Diego, there is a space for you. It’s so easy to fly in and out!
Lover, sculptor Isamu Noguchi, in Mexico
Why is Frida Kahlo an icon? Perhaps you would like to help me answer this question.
Supported by a frame, a corset, exposed, bare and barren.
What does she represent for women who aspire to be independent, strong, feminine and vulnerable?
Painting from a wheel chair, Casa Azul
She hid her misshapen body beneath glorious hand-woven and embroidered dresses, put her best foot and face forward. Persevered and thrived.
Loved by photographer Nicolas Murry. She was devoted to Diego.
Today, she is more famous, more revered than Diego Rivera because she exposed herself and revealed the internal, damaged self.
Frida refused to let her polio define her, though she wore a brace, sturdy shoes.
Andre Breton called her Mexico’s surrealist painter. She is more than that. Surrealism conjures up Salvador Dali and the distortions he saw in life. Frida reflected on her own distortions and created beauty from them.
Saludos, Norma
On the bus, a fateful day of destruction and a lifetime of reconstruction
Would Frida have become the painter she did without having suffered the trolley car accident that sent a metal spear through her uterus?
Frida Kahlo, 1907-1954
Self-portrait, through Frida Kahlo’s looking glass
Sometimes courage requires that we each put one foot in front of the other to move forward, despite set-backs. We love Frida Kahlo because through her story she teaches us that life requires risk, innovation, and that being afraid is part of our existence.
Painted gourd adorns kitchen table in Casa Azul
When Frida died, Diego Rivera wanted to establish a museum to honor her. She was not yet recognized. He convinced his friend, Dolores Olmedo, to invest in purchasing Frida’s paintings and Casa Azul.
Closet where Frida’s belongings were sealed for 50 years
But, he made her promise not to open the green closet door, where clothing, diaries and photos remained secreted for fifty years.
In 2006, the closet was opened and art history was rewritten.
The garden at Casa Azul
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Posted in Creative Writing and Poetry, Cultural Commentary, Mexico City, Workshops and Retreats
Tagged art history, Diego Rivera, feminism, Frida Kahlo, icons of womanhood, life, Mexican painters, Mexico City, study tour, Women