The exhibition Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera has landed at Art Gallery of NSW, opening Saturday June 25. Here's 5 things you should know about the two artists before you hit up their exhibition:
1. Frida and Diego met through the Mexican communist party. Many of the leading figures in the movement were also artists.
2. Their marriage was open (although it must be said, they did briefly separate, in 1934, after Diego had an affair with Frida’s younger sister), and after they returned from New York they lived in a bifurcated house that allowed them to live in separate residencies. They divorced in 1939, and remarried the following year.
3. Frida was studying to be a doctor – before a trolley-car crash, when she was 18, necessitated a change of direction. Happily, that direction was painting – and her interest in human anatomy and biology is evident in many of her (often graphic) works.
4. Of the 147 known works by Kahlo, 55 were self-portraits. Six of these are in the Art Gallery of New South Wales exhibition.
5. Whereas Kahlo’s work was intensely personal, Rivera’s was largely public: he’s best known for his social-realist murals and frescoes depicting the working class.
Read more about the contents of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
Here's the best art in Sydney this June.
