Kahlo’s appearance was heavily influenced by her Mexican heritage and political beliefs. Her choice to wear Tehuana dresses reflected her deep and unwavering devotion to her home country. Her dress and other creative enterprises were also used to cover the physical and emotional traumas that shaped her life. At the age of six, Kahlo contracted polio, which left her bedbound for several months and also damaged her right leg. When she was 18, Kahlo was in a near-fatal bus accident that left her disabled, with a lifetime of medical complications and in chronic pain. In the exhibition, items such as Kahlo’s plaster and leather corsets, bespoke orthopedic shoes (designed to compensate for Kahlo’s shorter right leg), and prosthetic limb (made after her leg was amputated) bear witness to the compounded traumas that Kahlo endured. While Kahlo would style herself from head to toe to cover her disability, she explored and revealed her most intimate selves through the direct gaze of her art.
“Kahlo composed unique and meaningful sartorial ensembles and posed for photographers that captured her iconic persona — as evidenced by the colorful outfits and stunning photographs on view in this exhibition,” says Gannit Ankori, advising curator of the exhibition. “She hid her disabilities behind such mesmerizing facades as she performed the role of the flamboyant Mexican woman. But in her paintings and drawings, Kahlo deliberately exposed her struggles, traumas, and alternative ‘selves,’ even as she challenged social norms, gender conventions, and art historical traditions.”
Nickolas Muray, "Frida with Olmeca Figurine, Coyoacán," 1939. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Gift of George and Marie Hecksher in honor of the tenth anniversary of the new de Young museum© Nickolas Muray Photo Archives
While Kahlo is today known as an international icon and renowned painter, during her lifetime she was not as famous as her husband, the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. It was in San Francisco that Kahlo began to cultivate her now-iconic Tehuana style and her identity as a painter.
“San Francisco had a deep impact on Frida Kahlo. While here, Kahlo saw people in our diverse city wearing their ethnic dress and, realizing the statement this made, began to develop her style as an expression of her mexicanidad,” explains Hillary Olcott, Associate Curator of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Kahlo loved San Francisco and her time here and elsewhere in the United States (or “Gringolandia,” as she called it) was formative and complex.”
This critically acclaimed exhibition originated at the Museo Frida Kahlo in Mexico City in 2012. It was further developed in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2018 and made its American debut in Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2019. The presentation at the de Young features paintings and drawings from museums and private collections in the United States and Mexico. The majority of artworks are unique to this venue, including a selection of Kahlo’s drawings that are on public view for the first time and that highlight Kahlo’s time in San Francisco. The exhibition also features Mexican artworks from the permanent collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, including pre-Hispanic sculptures and works on paper by Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving is curated by guest curator Circe Henestrosa, independent fashion curator and Head of the School of Fashion at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore, with advising curator Gannit Ankori, an internationally renowned Frida Kahlo scholar and Professor of fine arts and women, gender, and sexuality studies at Brandeis University. Hillary Olcott, Associate Curator of the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, is coordinating curator for the de Young’s presentation. The exhibition is on view at the de Young museum’s upstairs galleries.
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