Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in Moscow Manege
ARTinvestment.RU   25 декабря 2018

The exhibition Viva la Vida presents more than 90 works of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera from the Museum and private collections — from early to late: paintings, drawings, lithographs

Central exhibition hall "Manege"
21 Dec 2018 — on February 22 2019
Central Manege, Moscow, Manege square, 1

"Frida — is a ribbon wrapped around a bomb", — so the founder of surrealism Andre Breton described the art and life of the great Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Her paintings — explosive mixture of Mexican folk motifs and naive art in the spirit of the French modernists, and in their basis — a story of pain and love, passion and misunderstandings that accompanied Frida her entire life. From this alloy there was an image that went through the whole XX century and has become a challenge to the foundations of Western society.

21 Dec 2018 22 February 2019 Cultural-исторический Fund "Link of times" and the Faberge Museum (Saint-Петербург) for the first time presented in Moscow a large-scale exhibition project "Viva la Vida. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Paintings and drawings from museums and private collections" which shows masterpieces of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and tells the story of the most famous in twentieth-century art couples.

within two months in the heart of Moscow, Central exhibition hall "Manege", the audience can see a unique retrospective of the two artists — over 90 works of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, from early to late: paintings, drawings, lithographs. The exhibition comprised works from the collection of the Museo Dolores Olmedo (Mexico city), which has the world's largest collection of paintings of Kahlo and Rivera paintings and drawings from private collections in Europe and Latin America, works from the collection of the grandson of Diego Rivera, Juan Coronel Rivera and gallery "Arvil" (Mexico, USA), previously exhibited in Russia works from the Pushkin Museum. A. S. Pushkin, as well as previously unpublished documents from the Russian state archives. Complementing the exhibition, numerous photographs and documentary films about the life and work of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

Their acquaintance took place due to the painting when restoring power after the accident, Frida was brought to assessment eminent painter Rivera his first work. "This girl — artist from birth, extremely sensitive and capable of monitoring", — so late will tell Rivera about the work of the young generation. Their relationship would be overfilled with emotion and passion, all this will be reflected in her work. "I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality", — describes his works of Frida. Her work — is a pass in a surreal world, which at first enchants with its bright colors, and then reveals the depth of feeling of the artist, the pain of endless operations that she had to move, and the passion that filled her life. The exhibition includes early work of Frida, based on the traditions of European portraiture of the Renaissance, and works of the period of blossoming of her talent.

the Key works of Frida — self-portraits, including one of the most famous — "Broken column" (1944), hisa manifest of her suffering and resistance to the blows of fate, the artistic symbol of the power of women. All the images of "self-Portrait with monkey" are added to the message: Frida again does not trust Diego, and she draws strength from her past and those who are loyal to her. Frida Kahlo was the first artist who turned to the theme of the loss of a child: "Hospital Henry Ford" (1932) might seem shockingly intimate even for a modern viewer.

At the exhibition of the works of Frida and Diego will meet in the Central part of the exhibition —, it will roll paintings by the two artists and the Union of two unique personalities in a story of rivalry in the art of love-борьбы, which for many years was the main theme of Frida Kahlo's oeuvre: "In my life there were two accidents: one — when the bus crashed into a tram, another — is Diego". If the car accident was a fatal accident, then-за contradictory nature in which the strength and independence combined with the obsession and sacrifice, a difficult relationship with Diego Rivera was inevitable.

At the exhibition you can trace all the stages of art Diego Rivera: from a fascination with impressionism and cubism to realism. So, from the deeply personal work of Frida the viewer moves on to the monumental and social-ориентированным works Diego. The artist was several times in the Soviet Union and gave the Soviets some of my work. The exhibition presents the most significant of them — for example, the painting "Glorious victory" from the collection of the Pushkin Museum to them. A. S. Pushkin's, which in 1955, he donated the Union of artists, as well as the so-called "Russian" drawings, made during his second visit to the USSR in 1956.

By a happy coincidence, the monumental four-meter painting "Glorious victory" was not involved in the ill-fated exhibition outside of the Soviet Union, which lost the largest work of Frida Kahlo's "the Wounded table" (1940) transferred to the Soviet Union in 1945 as part of a large gift from the Mexican artists. But then, in 1955, the painting was lost during transport to an exhibition in Poland — until now, her whereabouts are unknown.

the Exhibition also includes a photo@- and video materials from Museum and private collections, photographs from the family archive, taken by Frida's father, photographer Guillermo Kahlo, as well as works by Gisele Freud, which for two years filming the daily lives of Frida, by the outstanding American photographer Nicholas Muray that in 1930-40-х was a friend, confidant and lover Frida.

In the framework of the Moscow project organized a large-scale parallel program designed to explore and understand the phenomenon of the creativity of two of the most famous artists of Mexico. The exhibition is accompanied by educational-просветительская and cultural programme: lectures by curators, film screenings, theatre performances and performances.

the Exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with articles Catherine Lopatkina, Helga Prignitz-Пода and Rafael Coronel Rivera.

Sources: moscowmanege.ru, frida-diego.ru, vogue.ru