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 Vallarta Living | Art Talk | November 2006 
Clothing Gives Glimpse of Late Artist Kahlo's Life
 Istra Pacheco - Associated Press
| | Frida Kahlo's tumultuous life has inspired several plays and films, including the 2002 movie "Frida," starring Salma Hayek. |
Mexico City — The trunk, discovered in the back of an old wardrobe in an unused bathroom, was like stepping into the past.
Curators opened the lid to find hundreds of Frida Kahlo's colorful skirts and blouses, many still infused with the late artist's perfume and cigarette smoke.
It has taken two years to log and restore the nearly 300 articles of clothing. Next summer, the embroidered and sometimes paint-smeared pieces will be put on display at Kahlo's family home-turned-museum to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the painter's birth. The exhibit will offer the public a new glimpse into Kahlo's flamboyant and tortured life.
The wife of muralist Diego Rivera, Kahlo is known as much for her outspoken and sometimes outrageous style as for her intensely personal paintings. She survived a horrible bus crash and polio as a child, was openly bisexual and had an affair with Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky.
Her tumultuous life has inspired several plays and films, including the 2002 movie "Frida," starring Salma Hayek.
Kahlo was known in part for her fashion leadership, and was featured on the cover of Vogue's French edition.
While most women were turning toward simple, elegant dresses, Kahlo was wearing long, full skirts that borrowed heavily from Mexico's traditional Indian dress. She often had her hair in braids, and refused to remove a mustache or trim her unibrow, both of which she exaggerated in her signature self-portraits.
The trunk of clothes was found in 2004 during a renovation of her family's home, where she died in 1954 after a life of nearly constant pain and dozens of surgeries for broken bones she suffered in the bus accident. |
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