The Jewish Museum
212.423.3271'; $contact_1_email='pressoffice@thejm.org'; $contact_2 = ''; $contact_2_email=''; $meta_key='jewish museum, jewish art, museum, jewish culture, jewish identity, judaism, ceremonial art'; $meta_desc='The Jewish Museum will present Frida Kahlo\'s Intimate Family Picture from September 5, 2003 through January 4, 2004.'; $title='FRIDA KAHLO\'S INTIMATE FAMILY PICTURE OPENS AT THE JEWISH MUSEUM ON FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5'; $sub_title=''; $content='The Jewish Museum will present Frida Kahlo\'s Intimate Family Picture from September 5, 2003 through January 4, 2004. The exhibition focuses on Frida Kahlo\'s 1936 painting, entitled My Grandparents, My Parents, and I, and presents a new perspective on the renowned Mexican artist. In addition to the original painting and a detailed preparatory sketch, exhibition visitors will be able to see documentary materials that influenced the painting\'s imagery such as reproductions of Kahlo\'s parents\' wedding picture, Henri Rousseau\'s The Present and the Past, a Nazi genealogical chart, and a medical illustration from Kahlo\'s library. The show provides insights into Kahlo\'s work and reveals important aspects of her hybrid and multicultural identity, as the daughter of a European Jew and a Mexican Catholic mestiza) (a woman of mixed European and Mexican Indian descent). A selection of seven vintage photographs of Frida Kahlo taken by her father, Wilhelm (Guillermo) Kahlo, a German-Jewish immigrant to Mexico, will illuminate the father and daughter relationship. The ways in which Kahlo incorporated images from Alfonso Toro\'s La Familia Carvajal, a book that illustrates the persecution of Jews during the Mexican Inquisition, into some of her works will also be explored. The painting, My Grandparents, My Parents, and I, is on loan from The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Guest curator Gannit Ankori of Hebrew University notes that, although she was far removed from practicing Judaism, "Kahlo was interested in her Jewish roots and viewed them as part of her \'genealogical identity.\'" The exhibition will reveal the ways in which this identity influenced My Grandparents, My Parents, and I as well as later works, and contributed to the political and social agendas the artist was committed to throughout her life. Kahlo was politically and artistically active in Mexico during the Nazi era, and her understanding of her Jewish heritage was inextricably linked to world events that occurred between the proclamation of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 and the Holocaust.

The exhibition guest curator of Frida Kahlo\'s Intimate Family Picture is Dr. Gannit Ankori, a lecturer at the Department of Art History at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and author of Imaging Her Selves: Frida Kahlo\'s Poetics of Identity and Fragmentation (2002). At The Jewish Museum, Susan Tumarkin Goodman, Senior Curator-at-Large, oversaw the development of the exhibition.

Throughout her life, Frida Kahlo was known first and foremost as the wife of artist Diego Rivera. In time, her dramatic life story, indigenous costumes, and avid devotion to Mexico drew attention to her colorful personality, and she came to be identified as the quintessential Mexican woman - La Mexicana.

"A close look at Kahlo\'s art reveals that alongside the Mexican persona, numerous other identities exist. Kahlo portrayed herself in alternative roles, appearing as an androgynous creature, a crowned nun, the Hindu goddess Parvati, a little deer, a plant woman, and as a Jew," said Gannit Ankori. "In this highly focused exhibition, Kahlo\'s deliberate references to her Jewish genealogy and identity are examined through a single painting. By retracing the artist\'s creative process, uncovering the varied sources that informed her work, and exploring the context in which it was created, we hope to shed light on aspects of Frida Kahlo\'s identity," she added.

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) was born in Coyoacán, Mexico, near Mexico City. A polio survivor, she was severely injured in a bus accident in 1925. While recuperating, she taught herself to paint. In 1928, she showed some of her works to the legendary Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, who encouraged her to continue her work. They married in 1929. Their tumultuous marriage, divorce and remarriage have by now become well known.

Frida Kahlo\'s father, Guillermo Kahlo, was an important photographer and an amateur painter. He was the son of Hungarian Jews from the German town of Baden-Baden. As a young man he immigrated to Mexico and married Matilde Calderón, a Mexican of Indian and Spanish ancestry. The family home, the Casa Azul, appears in the painting My Grandparents, My Parents and I. It was built by Guillermo Kahlo less than a year after Frida\'s birth. Frida Kahlo lived in the house most of her life. She spent all of her childhood there, when Coyoacán was still a village south of Mexico City, and continued to live there off and on, with and without Rivera, after their marriage in 1929 and remarriage in 1940. Kahlo never fully recovered from her bus accident. She eventually died in the Casa Azul on July 13, 1954, just one week after her 47th birthday. Today her ashes are kept there, and the house has been transformed into the Frida Kahlo Museum.

From childhood on, Frida was very close to her father. He had a profound influence on her life. During her bout with polio at age six, her father became the primary caregiver who nursed her back to health. Her mother was a meticulous housekeeper and devout Catholic whose conventional values created some distance between her and her daughters. Kahlo\'s father, on the other hand, recognized and encouraged Frida\'s intellectual independence and curiosity. She identified with him on many different levels.

An on-line version of this exhibition will be launched on the Museum\'s newly redesigned Web site (www.thejewishmuseum.org) in conjunction with this project, providing an interactive way for the public to engage the images and themes.

Guest curator Dr. Gannit Ankori and Professor Edward Sullivan, professor of art history at New York University, will discuss the work of Frida Kahlo in New Perspectives on Frida Kahlo, a lecture program at The Jewish Museum on Thursday, September 4 at 6:30 pm. Professor Sullivan will lecture on "Frida Kahlo and the Language of Objects," and Dr. Ankori will discuss "Behind the Mask: Frida Kahlo\'s Other Identities." Tickets for this program are $12 general public, $10 students and seniors, and $9 Jewish Museum members. For lecture information and tickets the public may call 212.423.3337. Program tickets may also be obtained from www.thejewishmuseum.org, the Museum\'s Web site.

Major support for Frida Kahlo\'s Intimate Family Picture is given in honor of Evelyn G. Clyman by the Eugene M. and Emily Grant Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Reed Foundation.

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