Left: Frida Kahlo revealing her medical corset that she painted under her huipil by Florence Arquin, ca. 1951. Huipils are loose fitting traditional tunics or blouses worn in Mexico and Central America. ©DR, collection privée ©Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo archives, Bank of México, fiduciary in the Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera Museums Trust. Photo courtesy Palais Galleria-Musée de la Mode de Paris. Handout via The Gourmet Gazette. Right: Frida Kahlo by Toni Frissell, US Vogue 1937. ©Toni Frissell, Vogue ©Condé Nast. Photo courtesy Palais Galleria-Musée de la Mode de Paris. Handout via The Gourmet Gazette

Paris, France — Frida Kahlo, Mexican artist, international icon, painted, demonstrated, travelled the world and endured tremendous physical suffering from illness and a tragic accident when she was just 18-years-old and on her way to a career in medicine. Her art and particularly her style are being showcased in a monumental exhibition at the Palais Galleria-Musée de la Mode de Paris, the city’s museum devoted to fashion, in an exhibition entitled Frida Kahlo, Beyond the Appearances. The show brings together some 200 objects emanating from the Casa Azul, the home in Mexico where Frida Kahlo was born and raised and where she would die. Clothing, correspondance, accessories, cosmetics, medicine, medical prothesis all offer an insight into an exceptional being. Her personal effects were placed under lock and seal upon her death in 1954 by her husband, the Mexican mural painter Diego Rivera, and re-discovered 50 years later in 2004. The highly successful exhibition is sold out until it closes on March 5th. We invite you to visit it here on the Gourmet Gazette and on the museum’s website, indicated at the end of the article.

This collection includes the traditional Mexican dresses of the Tehuana culture that the artist wore and the Pre-Colombian necklaces that she collected along with the medical corsets, body casts and artificial leg that her illnesses imposed upon her and which she painted and decorated herself. Films and photographs of the artist offer a visual account of her exceptional life. The show underscores how the artist fashioned her image and lifestyle nourished by her cultural heritage, her experience and her health which handicapped her. Her father was a German immigrant to Mexico and her mother was of Spanish and American Indian origin from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, a region known for the skill of its craftsmen. Her mother would impart upon Frida her taste for traditional clothing at an early age. Frida Kahlo was born in 1907 in Coyoacán, today a borough in Mexico City. At the age of 6 she contracted polio, forcing her into a life of isolation and when she was 18, she was severely injured in a tragic bus accident that left her with pain for the rest of her life. It was at that time that she began to paint. 

She would become devoted to her Mexican culture and she and her husband Diego Rivera renovated her family home in 1930. They filled it with objects reflecting their Mexicanidad (Mexicanity) notably folk art, Pre-Hispanic sculptures and votive paintings. Because of her ill health she was often confined to her home and transformed it into a world showcasing Mexico. The luxuriant garden was peopled with parrots, ducks, monkeys, a deer and the Xoloitzcuintli dogs, the famous Mexican hairless dogs, known to have existed in Mexico for over 3,000 years and regarded by the American Kennel Club as the first dog of the Americas. The home became an artistic pilgrimage site in a way and saw the likes of André Breton and Leon Trotsky walk through its doors. 

A highlight of the exhibition is the section devoted to Frida Kahlo’s clothing and jewelry. She wore traditional Mexican dress and she carefully put together each of her outfits. Although she mixed elements of several cultures together, she was particularly fond of those worn by the Tehuantepec matriarcal culture. She sported their embroidered blouses, their long skirts, elaborate coiffures and their woven shawls, the rebozos. Frida Kahlo died at home at Casa Azul on July 13th, 1954 at the age of 47. Her ashes rest in Casa Azul. ©Trish Valicenti for The Gourmet Gazette

https://www.palaisgalliera.paris.fr/en