Frida Kahlo

Left to right, that's Leon Trotsky, Diego Rivera, and André Breton. How much would you love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation?

This photo was taken by Fritz Bach in 1938. Trotsky was living with Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and Breton was visiting from Paris--this is the famous trip where Kahlo was "discovered" as a kind of homegrown surrealist. The photo is part of the touring Frida Kahlo Exhibition, put together by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and currently in its last weekend at the Philadelphia Art Museum.

It's a pretty good exhibition. I'm not enough of an expert on Kahlo to know if her art was well-represented, (haven't even seen the movie) but from my sketchy knowledge it seemed like everything I expected to be there was there, and appropriately contextualized. The real gem is that that the curators display, apparently for the first time in public, a series of candid snapshots that Kahlo had given to a friend for safekeeping. They are revelatory, showing Kahlo and her international circle of modernist friends in intimate and revealing moments. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing. You read about how painful her life was, with constant surgeries to deal with damaged caused by polio and a childhood car accident, but it is harrowing to see photographs of her body trussed up in a hospital bed. I particularly liked the pictures of Kahlo and her beloved Xoloitzcuintli dogs.

The show moves next to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Check it out if you are in town. It was insanely crowded here in Philadelphia, so advance tickets might be in order.