Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera

The marriage of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo is one of the most famous marriages between artists. It is a well-known fact that they had a passionate and stormy relationship. They both had incredible talents and vision, but Diego's work would be more public and monumental, whereas Frida's was more personal and intimate.

Diego Rivera was born in Guanajuato Mexico in 1886, but moved to Mexico City with his family when he was eight. He traveled to Paris in 1909, there, he was influenced by post- impressionism and cubism. In 1920, he went to Italy to study Renaissance art. When he returned to Mexico, Rivera quickly rediscovered his roots. He decided that he wanted to create paintings which would speak directly to the common people. He felt that art could play a part by educating the Mexicans about their history. His public murals illustrate hispanic culture's proud pre-Columbian past, their conquest by the Spanish, and the Mexican Revolution.

While Rivera's art looked outward, to social themes, Kahlo's looked inward, to intense personal expressions. This was largely due to the pain she was in throughout her life. At age 6, she was stricken with polio. When she was 18, she was involved in a serious bus accident, after this accident, Frida was forced to stay flat on her back. She began painting shortly after the accident because she was bored in bed.

She turned to alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes to ease the pain caused by her physical suffering. Her images focus on representations of herself, pictures of her physical pain, emotional longing, and her connection to the natural world. Frida was a very beautiful woman. She had particularly thick, hairy eyebrows, which she didn't disguise. In fact, she emphasized them a lot in her paintings. Her marriage to Diego has been called the union between an elephant and a dove, because Diego was huge and Frida was small and slender.

It is possible that Diego himself knew that some day Frida would be even more famous than himself. In 1953, one year before Kahlo's death, while he was well known as Mexico's greatest living painter, he gave an interview in which he said, "Frida Kahlo is the greatest Mexican painter." True of False

Diego Rivera travelled to Europe to study art.

Frida Kahlo's art is about the history of Mexico.

Frida started to paint because she was bored.

Frida was large and ugly.

Diego was known as a Dove. Diego thought that Frida's art was really good.

Fill in the blanks using the following words, (Mexico, loved, greatest, artists, educate, pain) Kahlo and Rivera were both ______they lived in ______, and were married. Riviera wanted to______people, whilst Kahlo's work was more about the______she was in. Frida and Diego ______each other, and Diego once said that Frida is the ______painter.