Pamela Cruz / Peninsula 360 Press
San Francisco. It seems like a lifetime has passed, but after six months of the San Francisco city museums being closed by Covid-19, de Young Museum will finally open its doors to the public this Friday, September 25, and will do so by the hand of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.
The intimate exhibition "Frida Kahlo: Appearances Deceive" will provide a perspective on the iconic artist, while revealing how politics, gender, disability and national identity shaped her life, art and creativity.
For the first time, the West Coast will enjoy a selection of the painter's belongings, found in her lifelong home: The Blue House, which now serves as the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City.
Sealed and stored after his death in 1954, the objects were developed 50 years after his death, including photographs, letters, jewelry, cosmetics, medical corsets and unique outfits, along with 34 drawings and paintings, as well as a lithograph covering his entire adult life.
"This historic exhibition paints a multifaceted portrait of one of the most innovative artists of the 20th century, whose vivid work provides us with important insights into Mexican culture, and whose extraordinary figure remains an inspiration to so many," said Thomas P. Campbell, executive director of the San Francisco Fine Arts Museum.
He added that the exhibition also strengthens the institution's long and lasting ties with Mexico, so "we are infinitely honored and excited to present Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceptive at de Young Museum.
For guest curator Cirse Henestrosa, this exhibition offers a very personal experience with unique exhibition objects, showing that Kahlo never allowed her disabilities to define her.
"Kahlo decorated and painted his own corsets to such an extent that it seemed he deliberately chose to wear them. She included them in her art and in the construction of her style as an essential element of her attire, almost like a second skin," explained Henestrosa.
While Kahlo is now known as an international icon and a leading painter, she said, she was not as famous as her husband, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, during her lifetime. It was in San Francisco that Kahlo began to cultivate her now iconic Tehuana style and identity as a painter.
"San Francisco had a profound impact on Frida Kahlo, while she was here she saw people in our diverse city wearing her ethnic dresses. Realizing the affirmation this implied, she began to develop her style as an expression of her Mexicanness," said Hillary Olcott, associate curator of arts from Africa, Oceania and the Americas.
Kahlo loved San Francisco. The time she spent here as in other parts of the United States, or "gringolandia," as she called this country, was formative and complex, she added.
The exhibition originated in Mexico City, was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2018 and made its American debut at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2019, so the show includes private collections from the United States and Mexico.
The exhibition includes a Braille portrait of Kahlo, where visitors with blindness or reduced vision can run their fingers over it to feel the outline of his face, as well as text identifying his eyebrows, ears, nose, eyes and mouth.
Mexican works of art from the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco's permanent collection will also be presented, including pre-Hispanic sculptures and works on paper by Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
The museum will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday, and tickets can be purchased at deyoung.famsf.org/frida-kahlo. It should be noted that the facilities will be at 25 percent of its capacity and the use of mouth covers will be mandatory.
Spaces where it is not possible to maintain a relevant distance will remain closed, in addition to which the museum committed itself to increasing cleaning routines and sanitation stations in the building.
