“Mirror Mirror . . . Frida Kahlo Photographs" show to open in NY

PanARMENIAN.Net - Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is known for her striking self-portraits, but the upcoming gallery exhibition “Mirror Mirror . . . Frida Kahlo Photographs" will take an outside view of the artist through images taken by 20 influential 20th-century photographers. The show will open at Throckmorton Fine Art in New York on May 21, Artnet News reports.

Among the many photographers who turned their lens on Kahlo were Edward Weston, Dora Maar, Carl Van Vechten, Lucienne Bloch, Lola Alvarez Bravo, and Diego Rivera, all of whom have works in the Throckmorton exhibition.

“Frida Kahlo's father was a photographer, and as a girl, she saw her looks in his photographs of her before she discovered mirrors, which became the inseparable companions that provided her with a sense of self," said Kahlo expert Salomon Grimberg in a statement. “As much, if not more than any movie star in Mexico, Kahlo was photographed and her photos nurtured the limelight around her."

This is shaping up to be Kahlo's Year. Currently, the show “Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit" at the Detroit Institute of Arts focuses on the year that Kahlo and Rivera spent in Detroit during the creation of Rivera's Detroit Industry murals (see Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Blockbuster at Detroit Institute of Arts Traces a Tragic Romance). In the spring, the New York Botanical Garden's “Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life" will recreate La Casa Azul, the artist's garden and studios (see Frida Kahlo's Garden Comes to NYC This Spring).

In addition to lending several photos to the gardens, Throckmorton will bring together over thirty vintage photographs of Kahlo for "Mirror Mirror," which will coincide with the Botanical Garden show.

"Today, those same photographs, which drew the public with her magic, continue seducing others," added Grimberg. "Kahlo and her exotic beauty are part of the universal conscious."

Of particular note in the planned show is a suite of five images of Kahlo by German-born photographer Gisele Freund taken between 1950 and 1952 that are among the final photos taken of the artist before her death at age 47.

Freund was a regular visitor at Kahlo and Rivera's home during this period, and her work from this time has been collected in the book Frida Kahlo: The Gisele Freund Photographs, published this month by Abrams.

“Mirror Mirror . . . Frida Kahlo Photographs" will be on view at Throckmorton Fine Art from May 21 to September 12, 2015.