The Pallant House Gallery Presents Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera Masterpieces

Written by Steven Gallagher Tuesday, 12 July 2011 00:49

Chichester, UK.- The Pallant House Gallery is proud to present "Masterpieces from The Gelman Collection", on view until October 2nd. The two most famous artists to have come from Mexico, the lives of Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) and Diego Rivera (1886-1957) have attained a mythological status. This major touring exhibition, which comes to Chichester from Istanbul and Dublin, brings together works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera for the first time ever in the UK.

Frida Kahlo was born in Coyoacán on the southern outskirts of Mexico City in 1907. Her father, Guillermo, was an atheist German immigrant photographer, her mother, Matilde, a fervent Catholic of mixed Spanish and Native American descent from Oaxaca. Frida' s mixed heritage was seen as the undercurrent for the prevailing theme of identity in her work, and her divided loyalties to Mexico and Europe.

After contracting polio at the age of six, which left her convalescing at home for nine months, she then almost died at the age of 18, following a bus crash. It was at this point, in 1925, when she was again bedridden and isolated, that she began to paint. The defiant, unapologetic gaze of her self portraits asserts her right to exist, and her refusal to be a victim. The face is as passive as a religious icon, however the symbols in her work unmask fervent psychological undertones. Kahlo painted self portraits she said ' because I am so often alone, I am the person I know best.' Her continued ill-health following the accident, including several miscarriages, provided her with the anguish, disconnection and loneliness which compelled her to paint, as a way of quantifying her existence, re-affirming her position in the world, and cementing her identity as an artist. It left her pre-occupied with mortality and trapped in a battle between her body and mind. Her experiences also left Kahlo with a profound neediness, and desire for recognition, culminating in her life-long attachment to Rivera. She respected him and valued his opinion of her work enormously. She was Rivera' s protector and protected. He encouraged her to take great pride in being Mexican; she wore the traditional Tehuana costume, rebozo shawls, and braided her hair to please him, and continuously sought his approval and love, despite many infidelities on both sides (famously his affair with Kahlo' s sister Cristina, and her affair with Leon Trotsky.)


Diego Rivera was born in Guanajuato but brought up in Mexico City. Celebrated as the founding father of the Mexican Muralist Movement, he was a talented painter with a striking personality and a fondness for debate. In 1907 he went to Europe on a painting scholarship to Madrid, then settled in Paris where he was influenced by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and the Futurists. After seeking refuge in Spain during the First World War Rivera returned to Mexico and began working on monumental scale murals, incorporating elements of Cubism and Constructivism with a touch of Italian and Spanish classicism, and the colours of Mexican popular art. He was very political, a unionist who helped found the Mexican Communist Party. This greatly appealed to Kahlo, who herself as a student, one of the few women at her University, had been very political. Rivera's masterpieces, of a very grand scale, are undoubtedly the murals he painted in public buildings. Rivera deliberately chose this route, and it is therefore difficult to give his achievements proper credit in temporary exhibitions outside Mexico. Nevertheless, his easel paintings reveal to a larger extent his talent. In truth, Kahlo excelled as an artist thanks to the support, stimulation and tutelage of Rivera, who was the foremost Mexican painter of his generation.

Kahlo and Rivera met in 1927, when she took some of her paintings to show him as he worked on a commission at the Ministry of Education. They married in 1929, her parents saying it was like the marriage between ' an elephant and a dove'. In the 1930's they spent four years in the United States where he worked on several large scale mural commissions in New York, Detroit and San Francisco.


Walter Hussey, the Dean of Chichester Cathedral, left his personal collection to the city in 1977 with the condition that the collection be shown in Pallant House, a Grade 1 listed Queen Anne town house dating from 1712. Since 1919, the house had been used as Council offices and from 1979 a restoration programme began and preparations were made for it to open in 1982 as a unique combination of historic house and modern art gallery. In 1985 an independent trust, consisting of the Friends and representatives of the Council, was formed to manage the Gallery. Since then the collections and the Gallery's activities have expanded to the extent that it was decided a new building was needed in order for it to survive. The Gallery reopened Summer 2006 with a new wing and vastly improved facilities. Pallant House Gallery boasts one of the best collections of Modern British art in the UK. donated over the past thirty years, the collections tell the story of a number of individuals, all passionate collectors of art who generously donated their lifetimes’ labours to the Gallery for the benefit of the public. Since Dean Walter Hussey's gift of works by Henry Moore, John Piper, Ceri Richards, Graham Sutherland and others that led to its inception in 1982, the Gallery has attracted the interest of other benefactors, most notably Charles Kearley and now Sir Colin St John Wilson. The core of this ‘collection of collections' is Modern British art but other artworks figure such at the Bow Porcelain of the Geoffrey Freeman Collection. Each group of works has been formed by different impulses and lends its own character to the collection, making the experience of Pallant House Gallery engaging, insightful and unique. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.pallant.org.uk

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