Frida Kahlo: Diego and I
A central artpiece of the exhibition Third eye. The Costantini Collection in Malba is Diego y yo [Diego and I] (1949) by Frida Kahlo (Coyoac谩n, 1907鈥�1954), which set a record for Latin American art when Costantini acquired it for his private collection in November 2021. It was the last self-portrait bust Frida painted before she died in 1954, which depicts the face of her husband Diego Rivera as a third eye. This work will be displayed with Autorretrato con chango y loro [Self-portrait with monkey and parrot] (1942) of Malba Collection and a considerable collection of documents, including Frida Kahlo鈥檚 photographs, letters and personal effects.
鈥淭he accident changed my life: Ever since, my obsession has been to begin again, painting things exactly as I see them, relying on my own eye鈥攏othing else.鈥� The daughter of Matilde Calder贸n, a Catholic mestiza, and Guillermo Kahlo, a German Jew, Frida Kahlo had an inclination for science and an exacting eye from the time she was small. In 1925, when she was eighteen years old, the car she was driving in was hit by a train, and her spine was fractured multiple times. In the years following the accident, some twenty-seven operations were performed on her. Though Frida had met Diego Rivera in 1922, when he was making the murals for the Bol铆var Amphitheater, their romance did not begin until 1928. One year later, they were married.
Diego and I symbolizes the tempestuous relationship between Frida and Diego, who were married for almost 25 years in a passionate and turbulent marriage. Though Kahlo opposed Catholicism, which had been passed down to her from her mother, she did use elements of Catholic iconography in her art. Indeed, spirituality pervades her life and work. Her transcendental vision was informed by how ancient Mesoamerican cultures view death, a vision tied to a cyclical conception of time where life and death are joined in an endless continuum. No less prevalent in her worldview are Egyptian culture, Hinduism, Buddhism, and occult teachings (indeed, that is where the representation of the third eye in the work Diego y yo comes from). Dualism is a common theme in her work, first and foremost in the binary between her own person and Diego, a dualism tied to universal dialectics like the masculine and the feminine, life and death, sun and moon, and body and mind.
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A central artpiece of the exhibition Third eye. The Costantini Collection in Malba is Diego y yo [Diego and I] (1949) by Frida Kahlo (Coyoac谩n, 1907鈥�1954), which set a record for Latin American art when Costantini acquired it for his private collection in November 2021. It was the last self-portrait bust Frida painted before she died in 1954, which depicts the face of her husband Diego Rivera as a third eye. This work will be displayed with Autorretrato con chango y loro [Self-portrait with monkey and parrot] (1942) of Malba Collection and a considerable collection of documents, including Frida Kahlo鈥檚 photographs, letters and personal effects.
鈥淭he accident changed my life: Ever since, my obsession has been to begin again, painting things exactly as I see them, relying on my own eye鈥攏othing else.鈥� The daughter of Matilde Calder贸n, a Catholic mestiza, and Guillermo Kahlo, a German Jew, Frida Kahlo had an inclination for science and an exacting eye from the time she was small. In 1925, when she was eighteen years old, the car she was driving in was hit by a train, and her spine was fractured multiple times. In the years following the accident, some twenty-seven operations were performed on her. Though Frida had met Diego Rivera in 1922, when he was making the murals for the Bol铆var Amphitheater, their romance did not begin until 1928. One year later, they were married.
Diego and I symbolizes the tempestuous relationship between Frida and Diego, who were married for almost 25 years in a passionate and turbulent marriage. Though Kahlo opposed Catholicism, which had been passed down to her from her mother, she did use elements of Catholic iconography in her art. Indeed, spirituality pervades her life and work. Her transcendental vision was informed by how ancient Mesoamerican cultures view death, a vision tied to a cyclical conception of time where life and death are joined in an endless continuum. No less prevalent in her worldview are Egyptian culture, Hinduism, Buddhism, and occult teachings (indeed, that is where the representation of the third eye in the work Diego y yo comes from). Dualism is a common theme in her work, first and foremost in the binary between her own person and Diego, a dualism tied to universal dialectics like the masculine and the feminine, life and death, sun and moon, and body and mind.
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