Java.April.2017

FRIDA AND DIEGO
At the Heard Museum
by Jenna Duncan
Works by two of the most beloved monoliths of
20th-century Mexican art, Frida Kahlo and Diego
Rivera, will be on view at Heard Museum’s brandnew
Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust Grand Gallery
this month. Dozens of works that belong to the
Jacques and Natasha Gelman collection center
around the infamous art couple’s intertwined lives,
works, friendships and domestic life.
This exhibit has been traveling the globe, visiting
Sydney, Australia, and Bologna, Italy, before touching
down in Phoenix, says Heard curator Janet Cantley.
Cantley takes care of preservation, research and
communication and does a lot of exhibit development
for Heard. Even though this show was already
organized, she has had many details to coordinate in
order to mount it in the Heard’s newest space.
Just two years ago, Heard Museum featured the
Frida Kahlo—Her Photos exhibition along with an
accompanying exhibit that included many pieces
recently discovered after spending decades locked
in one of Kahlo’s personal closets at the Blue House,
where she and Diego spent most of their domestic life
together. The Blue House, located in Coyoacán, a suburb
of Mexico City, is now operated as the Frida Kahlo
Museum, attracting thousands of visitors each year.
Cantley says that the exhibitions two years ago were
immensely popular and attracted a different audience
than usual. There were many families and members
of the Latino community and a greater number of
differently-abled guests, Cantley recalls. Kahlo’s
allure to such a broad audience may have a lot to
do with the physical hardships and surgeries she
endured during her lifetime.
The current collection of works going on view at
Heard consists of 33 paintings and drawings, along
with numerous photographs. In addition to Rivera
and Kahlo at the center, work by eight other Mexican
artists is represented, Cantley says. Paintings by
Maria Izquierdo, a contemporary of Kahlo and also a
feminist like her, will be on view, as well as figurative
abstract and surrealist paintings by Rufino Tamayo.
The slightly less well-known figure painter Ángel
Zárraga, who painted portraits of Natasha and
Jacques Gelman, will also be represented in this
show. The exhibit will include about 50 photos of
Kahlo and Rivera at home in Mexico, borrowed from
Frock Morton Fine Art in New York City.
Some of the works on view at Heard will be well
recognized by art students and lovers of the Mexican
modern art movement. Guests may recognize Rivera’s
“Calla Lily Vendor” and another of his paintings
entitled “Sunflowers.” Rivera’s works are easy to
distinguish because most are “very colorful,” says
Cantley. He used blocky representations of the human
form, “figures with round heads and no neck.”
Fans of Frida will recognize her “Self-Portrait with
Monkeys,” and those more familiar with her less
broadly published works may recognize “The Love
16 JAVA
MAGAZINE