Frida Kahlo Art Exhibit

Last week when I was home in Raleigh, North Carolina we took a day to go the North Carolina Museum of Art. I probably hadn't been to the museum since school - over ten years ago! I've seen all parts of the museum at one point or another, however I was especially motivated to visit this time because of the Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism exhibit.

I came to the exhibit with a previous conception of Frida Kahlo and her history, but this was my first time seeing her paintings in person. I was aware of the tragedy in her life and had studied her sorrow through her paintings in art history class. Her thoughts and feelings are easily interpreted through the paintings and the exhibit was expertly laid out with descriptions that reminded me of what I'd learned in class.

What I gathered from the exhibit that I hadn't expected was that among the paintings by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and other Mexican Modernist greats where photographs. The photographs were art themselves, but pictured Frida's art in progress, and Frida posing with her art, and posing as a model herself. Some of the photographs pictured her bedridden and confined to her wheelchair. But I think when I looked into the pictures of Frida with her art and as art, I see that despite her tragedies and sorrows that her art was everything to her.

This is exhibit was truly amazing and while it's only at the NCMOA for another few weeks, if it eventually makes its way to Oklahoma City I would see it again in a heartbeat.

-C