Frida Kahlo


Excellent one day workshop organised by the London Art History Society at Conway Hall looking at the life and work of Frida Kahlo.

Led by Jacqueline Cockburn the day split neatly in four lectures. In the morning we looked at Kahlo’s life and how it was reflected in her art. The lecturer talked about Kahlo’s polio and the results of her terrible injuries from a bus crash which left in her pain throughout her life. She also talked about Kahlo’s two marriages to Diego Rivera. In the second lecture of the morning we looked at three contemporary surrealist female artists who all came from Europe to live in Mexico, Remedois Varo, Leonora Carrington and Kati Horna. I’d only heard of Leonora Carrington so found this fascinating comparison to Kahlo and a nice idea to broaden the day out.

In the afternoon we took a detailed look at Kahlo’s diaries from 1944 until her death in 1954. These seem to be a mix of diary and sketch book and a place she worked out ideas about her life and work. Not written for publication they show an intimate picture of the inner workings of a life. Finally we looked at the current V&A exhibition and what a study of Kahlo’s possessions can tell us. We looked at how her image evolved and why she wore such extraordinary clothes, we also looked at the medical equipment in the show including the decorated back braces.

All in all a fascinating day which gave me a much greater understanding of the life of Kahlo even if I still don’t warm to her art.

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