Frida Kahlo

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.6 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2015

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Born near Mexico City in 1907, Frida Kahlo is considered one of Mexico's greatest artists. She took up painting after a bus accident left her severely injured, was a Communist, married Diego Rivera, a celebrated muralist, became friends with Trotsky and developed an iconic series of self-portraits. Her work brings together elements such as surrealism, pop culture, Aztec and Indian mythology and commentary on Mexican culture. In 1938, artist and poet Andre Breton organised an exhibition of her work in New York, writing in the catalogue, "The Art of Frida Kahlo is a ribbon around a bomb." She was not as widely appreciated during her lifetime as she has since become, but is now one of the most recognised artists of the 20th century.

With

Patience Schell Chair in Hispanic Studies at the University of Aberdeen

Valerie Fraser Emeritus Professor of Latin American Art at the University of Essex

And

Alan Knight Emeritus Professor of the History of Latin America at the University of Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time, for more details about in our time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.uk.
0:08.0	UK. I hope you enjoy the program.
0:11.0	Hello, the painter Frida Carlo was born near Mexico City in
0:14.6	1907. Though not widely known by the time she died in 1954, her
0:19.2	reputation has grown dramatically in the last 30 years and she's now seen as one of the most important
0:24.1	artists of the 20th century. Her self-portraits are at the core of her work. She's often dressed
0:29.0	in the traditional costume of Native American women, Native Mexican women sorry, and she emphasizes her
0:34.8	one continuous dark eyebrow and the faint shadow of mustache.
0:39.4	Many show her body damaged by polio and broken by the bus crash which almost killed her
0:44.4	and left her with chronic pain for life. She became part of the cultural
0:48.8	revolution that followed the violent Mexican Revolution, twice the wife of the then famous Diego Rivera, a prominent
0:56.1	communist.
0:57.1	She sheltered Trotsky in her home when started at exiled him from the Soviet Union, leading
1:01.2	to one of many affairs.
1:03.0	We'd me to discuss Frida Carlo Art.
1:05.0	Patient Shell, Chair in Hispanic Studies at the University of Aberdeen.
1:09.0	Valerie Fraser, an emeritus professor of Latin American art at the University of Essex
1:13.6	and Alan Knight
1:14.7	a emeritus professor of the history of Latin America at the University of Oxford.
1:19.0	Patient Schia Frida Carlo was a woman of her time.
1:22.2	What was happening politically in Mexico
1:24.5	around the time of her birth?
	...

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