Frida and Diego - New York Times (2024)

Among Mexico's most captivating and provocative artists, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera had a relationship that never failed to amaze and astonish. Though they created some of Mexico's most fascinating art, it's the bizarre Beauty-and-the-Beast dynamic that has captivated the world and enshrouded both figures in intrigue. Whether you're an art historian or simply an admirer of this eccentric duo, a visit to Mexico City -- where you can visit the home they once shared, admire their art, even see the shoes they wore and beds they slept in -- will prove to be a compelling reason to delve even further into their story.

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo's relationship was far from placid: they were married in 1929, divorced in 1940, and then married again that same year. Together, these two colorful, larger-than-life artists have endured as vibrant characters in a singularly Mexican drama. You can connect the dots on a journey of discovery in Mexico City, where you'll find numerous sites dedicated to Kahlo and Diego.

A gifted painter and muralist, Diego Rivera was also a political activist; many of the sumptuous murals he created in Mexico and throughout the world speak of politics, history, and the worker's struggle. Considered one of the 20th century's major artistic figures, Rivera created images -- especially those rounded peasant women with braided hair, arms brim-full of calla lilies -- that have come to typify Mexico. Museo Dolores Olmedo Patino, the estate of Rivera's longtime model, houses 140 pieces from Rivera's body of work and an outstanding collection of paintings by Frida Kahlo. For an up-close-and-personal look at Rivera's handiwork, head to Museo Mural Diego Rivera.

Flamboyant, irreverent, and unforgettable, Frida Kahlo created arresting, and at times disturbing, works of art. Fifty-five of her 143 paintings are self-portraits, which speak of her vivaciousness and personal tragedies. The 2002 movie Frida, with Salma Hayek in the title role, brought a whole new audience to Kahlo's work. If Diego dwarfed Frida in stature, he no longer does in fame. Museo de Frida Kahlo is a must-see, with exhibits of her early sketchbooks and diaries, colorful costumes, and extravagantly decorated living quarters. Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo is the home that Rivera and Kahlo shared; it is filled with fascinating and intimate details, such as Rivera's jacket flung over a wicker chair and some works in progress still perched on easels.

Frida Kahlo's hauntingly beautiful face, broken body, and bright Tehuana costumes have become the trademark of Mexican femininity. Images of her bat-wing brows, moustache, and clunky ethnic jewelry are as familiar in Mexico as Marilyn's pout and puffed-up white dress are in the U.S. This petite painter has gained international recognition since her death for her colorful but pained self-portraits.

In fact, Kahlo didn't even need to paint to make it into the history books. Controversy surrounded her two marriages to Diego Rivera, including his affair with her younger sister and her own affair with Communist exile Leon Trotsky. It's hard not to become mired in the tragic details of her life -- from childhood polio to a tram accident that smashed her pelvis, and a gangrenous foot that resulted in the amputation of a leg.

But Kahlo was also a groundbreaking artist who pioneered a new expressiveness, and her unique iconography of suffering transcended self-pity to create an existential art. Kahlo was the first Latin American woman to have a painting in the Louvre; her work caused a storm in Paris in 1939 (at an exhibition entitled Méxique). It was André Breton who described her art as "a ribbon around a bomb."

Frida Kahlo tried hard to be as much the revolutionary as the icon of Mexican femininity. Her last public appearance was 11 days before her death on July 13, 1954, in a wheelchair at Diego's side, protesting the intervention of the United States in Guatemala.

Diego Rivera was active both in art and politics early in his life, getting expelled from his academy for joining a student strike. In 1907 he won a scholarship to study abroad and left Mexico for Spain. He returned home briefly in 1910 and held a successful exhibition in Mexico City, at which Porfirio Diaz's wife purchased six of the forty paintings. As auspicious as this event was, Rivera opted to return to Paris in 1911, this time falling in with the Parisian avant garde.

A trip to Italy in 1919 with fellow Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros introduced Rivera to the frescoes of the great Italian painters. In 1921, Rivera decided to return to Mexico with a plan to incorporate these techniques into his art -- art that would be created for the enjoyment of the public. In the grand murals he created, he addressed Mexican history and humanity's future at large.

Rivera's presence -- and the controversy that inevitably followed him -- had a profound effect on American painting and the American conception of public art. The strong Marxist themes in his work raised eyebrows wherever he went, but no controversy was greater than the one caused in 1933, when he endowed a mural commissioned by the Rockefellers for the lobby of the RCA building in Rockefeller Center with a portrait of Lenin. Rivera refused to remove the portrait from the mural, and the commission was canceled and the whole piece destroyed.

Despite these controversies, Rivera's work proved to be the inspiration for Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA) program, which provided many unemployed artists with work during the 1930s. Rivera also continued to play a central role in the development of Mexican national art until his death in Mexico City in 1957.