Diego and Frida in San Angel

Blanca Garduño Pulido'

iego Rivera and Frida Kahlo children like those in Portrait of were married August 21, the Little Girl Juanita Rosas and his 1929. The next year they wife Frida. A year later he would draw went to San Francisco to indigenous women and children sell- DWorking on the Muralat the Uni- ing calla lilies, landscapes and people paint versity of California. By 1931, the from daily life like in The Murder of young architect Juan O'Gorman had Manlio Fabio Altamirano. People and designed two unique functionalist their work, fiestas or sorrows: nothing houses, completed July 31, 1932, in escaped his artist's eye in this house Mexico City's San Angel district, as can under whose roof Guadalupe Marín be seen in the series ofphotos taken by (his previous wife) and movie actress- Frida's father Guillermo Kahlo, famous es Dolores del Río, María Félix and for his photographs of monuments. Silvia Pinal all posed. 2 In this studio, Rivera and Kahlo occupied the hous- Diego did most of his easel work es from January 1934 on, when they (almost 3,000 canvases) and he lived returned after their extended stay in there until the day he died, Novem- The entrante. the United States. ber 24, 1957. In 1934, Rivera began his work The In the San Angel house, Frida mat- The Fruit of the Land, Self-Portrait Mexico of Today and the Future on the ured as a painter and produced works with Monkey and the series of portraits stairway of Mexico's National Palace. like The WarningEye, A Few Pinpricks, that include the famous The Two Fri- His portraits include friends and rel- Little Dead Dimas, My Nana and I, In 1941 Frida moved back to her atives, like photographer Tina Modotti, 1 das. parental home in Coyoacán (today the has been told and retold in different biographies Frida Kahlo Museum) a few days after ". Director of the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and even in novels, like the one by Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska, Tinísima, Era, Mexico the April 14 death of Guillermo Kahlo Studio-House Museum . Tina Modotti was a famous Mexican pho- City, 1992. and lived there until her own death, In different periods, these three actresses were the tographer —both because of her spectacular 2 July 14, 1954. person and her political activity— whose life reigningqueens of Mexican film. [Editor's Note.]

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Diego's and Frida's studio houses hosted visitors from all walks of life: politicians, artists, literati, magnates, intellectuals and women, always wom- en. Through that house carne Leon Trotsky, Lázaro Cárdenas, Nelson Ro- ckefeller and Pablo Neruda, among others. In 1938, the French philosopher and poet André Breton, the father of Surrealism, arrived at San Angel, the scene of artistic production and the flow of lives and people. He called Frida's work "the product of a wounded palette from which a red shadow emanates, Frida's studio-house. that dark color of fire that is the color of the earth of Mexico."

museums in the United States and Diego's studio-house took from July 1 Central and South America). It also to December 18 of the following year. THE DIEGO RIVERA STUDIO-INBA put out 40 publications contributing The federal government, the National MUSEUM to the knowledge about Rivera, Kahlo Council for Culture and the Arts and and O'Gorman, as well as to the his- the National Institute of Fine Arts pre- Accompanied by the history and spirit tory of art in Mexico. Other activities sented Mexico and the world with the of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, the included workshops, guided tours, "twin houses," giving them their new studio-houses of San Angel became the lectores, book presentations and infor- narre, the Diego Rivera and Frida Diego Rivera Studio Museum Decem- mational programs about the museum. Kahlo Studio-House Museum. ber 16, 1986, as part of the celebration Visitors can now see the architec- of the centennial of Diego's birth ture as originally designed and built by (1886-1957). From then on, the muse- DIEGO'S AND FRIDA'S Juan O'Gorman as well as the tempo- um's mission of promoting culture has STUDIO-HOUSE MUSEUM rary exhibits of their work and that of fostered the preservation, research, their contemporaries. Ready for the exhibition and dissemination of the Seventy-three years after being built, twenty-first century, the exhibits also lives and work of Diego Rivera and and after eight years of research, the display innovations in the field of Frida Kahlo, as well as those of the National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA) museology. architect, designer, builder, painter and decided in 1995 to restore the houses' muralist Juan O'Gorman (1905-1982) original appearance, making them the and their contemporaries. only example of modernist Mexican In the 10 years after its founding, architecture extant today. Coordinated the Diego Rivera Studio Museum by the INBA Office for the Architecture held 11 permanent exhibitions, 67 tem- and Conservation of Artistic Build- porary exhibits, 69 touring Mexican ings, the work on Frida's studio-house shows and 33 international shows lasted from August 14 to December (some of which were presented in 12, 1995, while the restoration of Diego's studio-house.

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