Frida Kahlo’s Garden Comes to NYC This Spring

Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940.)Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. © 2014 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) has announced that their new exhibition “Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life” will open in May 2015 (see New York Botanical Garden Will Recreate Frida Kahlo’s Garden). Focusing on the iconic artist’s relationship with nature, it will be the first solo show of Kahlo’s work in New York City in over 25 years. It is also the first exhibition to focus entirely on her interest in the natural world.

In addition to featuring about a dozen of Kahlo’s drawings and paintings, the Bronx show will recreate her lush studio and garden at Casa Azul in Mexico. An augmented reality app, sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies, will provide guests with a detailed look at the recreated Casa Azul, as well as Kahlo’s inspirations, including specific plants she depicted in her paintings and drawings.

“Many of [her] portraits incorporate plants and other organic materials,” the NYBG explained in a press release. “In her still-life paintings, she depicts a variety of Mexican fruit and flowers alongside animals, Mexican folk art, and pre-Columbian objects. Kahlo’s inclusion of plants and nature in her work spans her entire career but her most intensive dedication to the still-life genre dates to the 1940s and 1950s, particularly as her health declined and she was increasingly confined to her home and garden.”

 


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