London Museum Explores Frida Kahlo’s Life Through 200 Personal Objects From Her Blue House
12 July, 2018The exhibition, Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up, at Victoria and Albert Museum, is currently showcasing more than 200 items from the Blue House, which was Frida Kahlo’s base in Mexico City and also the location where she died in 1954 aged 47.
The V&A exhibition, which is on until November 4th, brings together Frida Kahlo’s clothes, paintings and objects to explore the adverse life story behind one of the 20th century’s most celebrated female artists.
Intriguingly, the house-turned-studio, where Kahlo was born and grew up, and where she lived and worked, also served as a refuge for the exiled Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky, with whom she had an affair.
“A counter-cultural and feminist symbol, this show offers a powerful insight into how Frida Kahlo constructed her own identity,” said the exhibition’s co-curator Claire Wilcox. The exhibition brings together dresses, jewellery, letters, paintings, family photos, medical corsets, the make-up she used to emphasise her monobrow, medicines, and her false leg.
The leg has a red boot, a few pieces of Chinese embroidery and even a bell on it “to make it even more obvious,” Mexican co-curator Circe Henestrosa told AFP. “Why would it be an ugly leg if she was an artist?” she said.
Find out more about the exhibition at the V&A website.
On now until Sunday, 4 November 2018
Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up
Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL
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