Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving to Premiere to West Coast Audiences at the de Young

Jul 1, 2020

Woman with flowers in hair holding green figurine.

Nickolas Muray, Frida with Olmeca Figurine, Coyoacán, 1939.

Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving
de Young museum \ Through May 2, 2021

“Feet, what do I need them for
If I have wings to fly” – Frida Kahlo

Press Release in Spanish here.

SAN FRANCISCO—In 1930, Frida Kahlo left Mexico for the first time and traveled to San Francisco. This experience was deeply influential, shaping Kahlo’s self-fashioned identity and launching her artistic path. In Fall 2020, she has returned to San Francisco with the intimate exhibition Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving at the de Young museum. Offering a perspective on the iconic artist unknown to most, the exhibition reveals the ways in which politics, gender, disability, and national identity informed Kahlo’s life, art, and multifaceted creativity. Making its West Coast premiere, Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving features a selection of Kahlo’s possessions from her lifelong home, La Casa Azul, now the Museo Frida Kahlo in Mexico City. Locked away following Kahlo’s passing in 1954, these poignant items were unsealed in 2004, fifty years after her death. The exhibition presents these personal belongings—including photographs, letters, jewelry, cosmetics, medical corsets, and exceptional garments—alongside 34 of Kahlo’s drawings, paintings, and a lithograph that span Kahlo’s entire adult life.

“Reinforcing our institution’s long-standing close ties to Mexico, we are infinitely honored and thrilled to present Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving at the de Young museum,” states Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “The landmark exhibition paints a multifaceted portrait of one of the most innovative artists of the 20th century; whose vivid work provides an important window into Mexican culture, and whose extraordinary persona continues to be a source of inspiration to so many.”

Today, Kahlo is known for her distinctive personal style as much as for her extraordinary art. She took great care with her appearance and constructed her personal image as meticulously as her paintings. Her image, immortalized in her own self-portraits and through the lens of such photographers as Nickolas Muray, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Gisèle Freund, and Lola Álvarez Bravo, is now instantly recognizable. Since her death, Kahlo has become an icon, her likeness reproduced in books, murals, shopping bags, socks, and even a controversial Barbie doll by Mattel.

“The exhibition gives a very personal experience with deeply individualized objects on view. Kahlo never allowed her disabilities define her—she defined who she was in her own terms,” states Circe Henestrosa, guest curator of exhibition. “Kahlo decorated and painted her corsets, making them appear as though she had explicitly chosen to wear them. She included them in her art and in the construction of her style as an essential wardrobe item, almost as a second skin.”

Kahlo’s appearance was heavily influenced by her Mexican heritage and political beliefs. Her choice to wear Tehuana dresses reflected her deep and unwavering devotion to her home country. Her dress and other creative enterprises were also used to cover the physical and emotional traumas that shaped her life. At the age of six, Kahlo contracted polio, which left her bedbound for several months and also damaged her right leg. When she was 18, Kahlo was in a near-fatal bus accident that left her disabled, with a lifetime of medical complications and in chronic pain. In the exhibition, items such as Kahlo’s plaster and leather corsets, bespoke orthopedic shoes (designed to compensate for Kahlo’s shorter right leg), and prosthetic limb (made after her leg was amputated) bear witness to the compounded traumas that Kahlo endured. While Kahlo would style herself from head to toe to cover her disability, she explored and revealed her most intimate selves through the direct gaze of her art.

“Kahlo composed unique and meaningful sartorial ensembles and posed for photographers that captured her iconic persona—as evidenced by the colorful outfits and stunning photographs on view in this exhibition,” says Gannit Ankori, advising curator of the exhibition. “She hid her disabilities behind such mesmerizing facades as she performed the role of the flamboyant Mexican woman. But in her paintings and drawings, Kahlo deliberately exposed her struggles, traumas, and alternative ‘selves,’ even as she challenged social norms, gender conventions, and art historical traditions.”

While Kahlo is today known as an international icon and renowned painter, during her lifetime she was not as famous as her husband, the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. It was in San Francisco that Kahlo began to cultivate her now-iconic Tehuana style and her identity as a painter.

“San Francisco had a deep impact on Frida Kahlo. While here, Kahlo saw people in our diverse city wearing their ethnic dress and, realizing the statement this made, began to develop her style as an expression of her mexicanidad,” explains Hillary Olcott, Associate Curator of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Kahlo loved San Francisco and her time here and elsewhere in the United States (or “Gringolandia,” as she called it) was formative and complex.”

This critically acclaimed exhibition originated at the Museo Frida Kahlo in Mexico City in 2012. It was further developed in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2018 and made its American debut in Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2019. The presentation at the de Young features paintings and drawings from museums and private collections in the United States and Mexico. The majority of artworks are unique to this venue, including a selection of Kahlo’s drawings that are on public view for the first time and that highlight Kahlo’s time in San Francisco. The exhibition also features Mexican artworks from the permanent collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, including pre-Hispanic sculptures and works on paper by Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving is curated by guest curator Circe Henestrosa, independent fashion curator and Head of the School of Fashion at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore, with advising curator Gannit Ankori, an internationally renowned Frida Kahlo scholar and Professor of fine arts and women, gender, and sexuality studies at Brandeis University. Hillary Olcott, Associate Curator of the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, is coordinating curator for the de Young’s presentation. The exhibition is on view at the de Young museum’s upstairs galleries.

In Depth
The exhibition is divided into six sections. It begins with a look at Frida Kahlo’s family roots and the experiences of her formative years. Visitors are welcomed by photographs of the artist and her family taken by her father, Guillermo (Wilhelm) Kahlo, alongside a selection of her early sketches, including a drawing in which Kahlo visualizes her traumatic 1925 accident. They then continue to an introduction to the art and politics of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920)—the backdrop of Kahlo’s childhood and adolescence—and the cultural renaissance that followed. Visitors see how Kahlo’s family heritage and formative years as well as the politics of her time influenced her self-made identity and launched her artistic journey.

From there visitors move into La Casa Azul (The Blue House), where Kahlo was born, lived for most of her life, and died. Her father built the house in 1904; Kahlo and Rivera renovated it before they moved in during the 1930s. Since Kahlo was often housebound due to her medical condition, she transformed her home into a microcosm of her beloved Mexico. She filled the home with diverse Mexican artworks, including folk art, ceramics, and votive paintings. She filled the courtyard with citrus trees, colorful flowers, archaeological statues, and a mélange of pets. La Casa Azul became a cultural hub, attracting luminaries from Mexico and abroad, and is yet another expression of Kahlo’s mexicanidad (Mexican-ness) and her brilliant creative power.

The exhibition then examines Kahlo’s two visits to San Francisco. Kahlo first traveled to “Gringolandia” (as she called the United States) in 1930, accompanying her husband Diego Rivera as he painted murals in San Francisco, New York, and Detroit. In San Francisco, Kahlo made lifelong friends, began to fashion her Tehuana style, and started to paint seriously. In 1940, Kahlo returned to San Francisco for medical treatment and to remarry Rivera, whom she had divorced the previous year. Here visitors have the opportunity to view several of Kahlo’s lesser-known works painted in San Francisco (all of which are still held in Bay Area collections): Portrait of Mrs. Jean Wight (1931, collection of Gretchen and John Berggruen); Portrait of Dr. Leo Eloesser (1931, UCSF School of Medicine Dean’s Office at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center); and Frieda and Diego Rivera (1931, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art).

In the next section, visitors encounter a rare and intimate view of the artist. Here, Kahlo’s medicines, cosmetics, accessories, orthopedic devices, and hand-painted plaster corsets are displayed alongside photographs of the artist and her paintings and drawings. Visitors see how Kahlo constructed and deconstructed herself, concealing and revealing facets of her identity and appearance. This is lucidly displayed in the drawing Appearances Can Be Deceiving (ca. 1946, Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust), where Kahlo reveals that her Tehuana dress is camouflage for her injured body. Kahlo also used her art to express and explore her experiences with disability and pain while demonstrating her resilience and ability to create beauty, joy, and art until the end of her life.

The exhibition culminates in a final gallery about art and dress, in which visitors encounter Kahlo’s sartorial self-expression—her mesmerizing outfits—alongside her choice accessories and unparalleled iconic self-portrait paintings. Arresting paintings such as Self-Portrait (1948, private collection), in which Kahlo paints herself wearing a resplandor (a ceremonial headdress worn by the women of Tehuantepec on special occasions). The actual resplandor ensemble from Kahlo’s wardrobe is on view just feet away. In the Lucienne Bloch photograph Frida with Cinzano Bottle, New York (1935, Hecksher family collection), Kahlo is seen wearing a mottled bolero that she then paints herself wearing in the rarely seen Memory (The Heart) (1937, private collection). Along with the photograph and painting, the Tehuana dress she holds in her left hand is also on view nearby. The stunning Self-Portrait Dedicated to Dr. Leo Eloesser (1940) was painted after her remarriage to Rivera in San Francisco, for Eloesser, her doctor, best friend, and confidante.

Extended Hours
We are extending museum hours to 7:45 pm for Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving every Friday and Saturday throughout November. All guests must reserve timed tickets to enter (the latest timeslot is 6:45 pm). Tickets will sell out. We recommend booking them in advance online to secure your desired date and time with fast and contactless admission when you arrive.

About Frida Kahlo
The artist Frida Kahlo (Mexican, 1907–1954) is today an iconic figure, known as much for her path-breaking artwork as for her striking appearance. Kahlo began to paint while recovering from a near-fatal bus accident in 1925, which left her with lasting medical complications, disabilities, and chronic pain. In 1929, at 22, Kahlo married 43-year-old Mexican muralist Diego Rivera (1886–1957). Their union was unconventional and tumultuous—they divorced in 1939 and remarried thirteen months later in San Francisco. Throughout, they shared a deep devotion to art, to Mexico and its multifaceted cultures, and to revolutionary politics. Many of Kahlo’s approximately 200 paintings explore her complex identities and engage themes of disability, gender, and politics. Her paintings elude definition. Sometimes associated with Surrealism, Kahlo herself resisted that categorization, stating that her paintings were “the frankest expression of [her]self.” Upon her death in 1954, at the instruction of Rivera, many of her personal possessions were locked away in La Casa Azul—the home where she was born, lived most of her life, and died. Today, La Casa Azul, located in Coyoacán, Mexico City, houses the Museo Frida Kahlo, where in 2004 the remarkable trove of items that had been hidden away 50 years earlier came to light. Drawings, documents, accessories and Kahlo’s colorful self-fashioned outfits from La Casa Azul—along with select paintings by Kahlo and items from the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco—form the heart of this exhibition.

#FridaKahlo

Visiting \ de Young
Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco. Open 9:30 am–5:15 pm Tuesdays–Sundays. Open select holidays; closed most Mondays. The de Young will be open with extended hours for Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving between 4:30-6:45 pm every Friday and Saturday in November and December.

Ticketing
Information regarding tickets can be found at deyoungmuseum.org. Extended Hours: We are extending museum hours to 7:45 pm for Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving every Friday and Saturday throughout November. All guests must reserve timed tickets to enter (the latest timeslot is 6:45 pm). Tickets will sell out. We recommend booking them in advance online to secure your desired date and time with fast and contactless admission when you arrive.

Programming
Local Voices
“Local Voices” is a new podcast series from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, designed to celebrate art and Bay Area creativity. “Local Voices” highlights unique perspectives from Bay Area visual artists, musicians, scholars, community leaders, and thinkers aimed to reframe exhibitions and collections through relevant and local narratives. Through these diverse access points, we welcome the Bay Area community and beyond to engage in meaningful and inspiring narratives.

  • Monday, September 28 \ Episode 1: Meet Artist Rio Yañez: Rio Yañez (host of the series) tells the story of how his father, Rene Yañez, fought to open Frida Kahlo’s first gallery show on the West Coast, here in San Francisco.
  • Monday, October 5 \ Episode 2: Twin Walls Murals Company: Twin Walls Murals Company (Elaine Chu and Marina Perez-Wong) talk about their 20+ year friendship and the influence of Frida Kahlo and other strong local women artists in their own journey as women in the arts.
  • Monday, October 12 \ Episode 3: Fernando Escartiz: Fernando Escaritz, a local sculptor, has created large size installations inspired by his lived experiences and his love for the Mexican culture. He revisits his childhood in Coayacan and the influence that Frida Kahlo’s home, Casa Azul, had in shaping his craft.
  • Monday, October 19 \ Episode 4: Linda Gamino: Linda Gamino, Associate Director of Ensambles Ballet Folklórico de San Francisco, opens up about her story of a tragic accident that affected her life, and the impact of Frida Kahlo in helping her overcome her disability.
  • Monday, October 26 \ Episode 5: Astrosagas: Astro Sagas, local video producer and astronomer, talks about her parent’s journey, love of San Francisco, and Frida Kahlo’s influence on art and politics.
  • Monday, November 2 \ Episode 6: Marilet Martinez: Marilet Martinez, local actor and comedian, shares stories of growing up as a Chicana in the Mission district and her career inspired by strong and fearless Latinx women like Frida Kahlo.
  • Monday, November 9 \ Episode 7: Jean Franco: Jean Franco, a local Frida Kahlo look-alike actor, has traveled the world bringing a bit of the beloved artist to every place. We learn about how they were discovered and the journey the likeness to an icon has brought them.
  • Monday: November 16 \ Episode 8: The Great Tortilla Conspiracy: Rio Yañez presents The Great Tortilla Conspiracy, a tortilla printmaking collective, that began their work at the de Young Museum in 2007 and have been silkscreening Frida’s image on tortillas ever since. He shares their unique art process and new developments.

Wednesday Nights
Celebrate mid-week with unique virtual programming from the Museums every Wednesday at 5 PM. Join us as we build relationships through innovative dialogues and experiences. Meet artists and thinkers from a diverse range of disciplines, backgrounds, identities, abilities, and sensibilities.

  • October 7 – Rio Yañez in conversation with Twin Walls Murals Company \ Tortilla Conspiracy
  • October 14 – Rio Yañez in conversation with Fernando Escartiz \ Linda Gamino
  • October 21– Rio Yañez in conversation with Astrosagas and Marilet Martinez
  • October 28 – Rio Yañez in conversation with Yolanda Lopez

Exhibition Organization
This exhibition originated in the extensive investigation of Frida Kahlo’s personal belongings found in trunks, wardrobes, drawers, bathrooms, and cellars of La Casa Azul that had remained closed for over fifty years before being exhibited for the first time at the Museo Frida Kahlo (2012–2014) and later presented at the V&A London. Presenting Sponsors: John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn and Diane B. Wilsey. Major Support provided by The Harris Family; The Bernard Osher Foundation and The Michael Taylor Trust. Significant Support provided by Aeroméxico and the Ray and Dagmar Dolby Family Fund. Generous Support provided by Janet Barnes and Thomas W. Weisel Family; George and Marie Hecksher. Additional Support is provided by Susie and Fred Harburg in memory of Zvi Ankori; Alec and Gail Merriam; and Paul A. Violich. With special thanks to the Banco de México Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Museums Trust; its Technical Committee and its president Carlos García Ponce; general director Carlos Phillips Olmedo; ADABI and its president Isabel Grañen Porrúa; Mr. Alfredo Harp Helú; and Hilda Trujillo, Perla Labarthe, Laura Zavala, Xochiquétzal González, Claudia Romo, Luanda López, Circe Henestrosa, and the researchers who participated. With special thanks to the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura and the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Access Programs
Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving includes a braille portrait of Kahlo within the exhibition. Visitors who are blind or have low vision will be able to run their fingers along the portrait, thereby feeling the outline of her face, which will include braille text identifying her eyebrows, ears, nose, eyes, and mouth. Learn more about our access programs here.

About the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco oversee the de Young, located in Golden Gate Park, and the Legion of Honor, in Lincoln Park. It is the largest public arts institution in San Francisco, and one of the most visited arts institutions in the United States.

The de Young originated from the 1894 California Midwinter International Exposition in Golden Gate Park and was established as the Memorial Museum in 1895. It was later renamed in honor of Michael H. de Young, who spearheaded its creation. The present copper-clad landmark building, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, opened in October 2005. Reflecting an active conversation among cultures, perspectives, and time periods, the collections on view include American painting, sculpture, and decorative arts from the 17th to the 21st centuries; arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas; costume and textile arts; and international modern and contemporary art.

Media Inquiries
Press@famsf.org \ 415.465.3531

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