Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera ─ Mexican Modern Art

A new survey of the masterworks of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, set against the backdrop of Mexican Modernism. Few artists have captured the public’s imagination with the force of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Icons respectively of surrealism and the Mural Movement, their work reflected their immersion in indigenous Mexican culture while looking ahead to progressive ideals and wielding a defining influence on Mexican Modernism. Brought together for a unique exhibition at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, this catalog includes more than thirty masterpieces by Kahlo and Rivera from the renowned Gelman Foundation Collection in Mexico City, among them such iconic works as Kahlo’s Autorretrato con Monos (Self-Portrait with Monkeys) and Diego en Mi Pensamiento (Diego on My Mind), and Rivera’s Autorretrato (Self-Portrait) and Retrato de Natasha Gelman (Portrait of Natasha Gelman). Set in the broader context of the Mexican modernist movement, Kahlo’s and Rivera’s pieces are accompanied by works by such other masters as Jose Clemente Orozco, Rufino Tamayo, and Leonora Carrington. This book is being published to coincide with the exhibition Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection and Mexican Modernism from the Stanley and Pearl Goodman Collection, at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale.

Helga Prignitz-Poda is an art historian and specialist in Latin American studies who lives in Istanbul and Berlin. She is the author of several works on Frida Kahlo.