Frida Kahlo — Revolutionary - Dawn Ades

An exploration of Frida Kahlo’s life, art and singular vision, revealing the story of an artist caught in the contentious worlds of post-revolutionary Mexico, Communism and Surrealism. Frida Kahlo – Revolutionary traces Frida Kahlo’s intellectual and artistic development in the context of Mexican cultural nationalism, left-wing politics and her personal experiences of illness, disability and grief, as well as her later engagement with the Surrealists and renewed involvement with the Communist Party. Presented in three parts, the text first looks at Kahlo’s political and artistic awakening in a newly post-revolutionary society. In the second part, close readings unpack her paintings’ dense, layered symbolism and often highly personal relationship to the popular traditions and visual languages of Mexico. The final section considers her association with Surrealism and the evolving connections between her art and her politics. The book incorporates text from Ades’s essay Kahlo, Surrealism, and the Mexican Revolution, originally published in 2016 for the exhibition Frida Kahlo at the Dali at The Dali Museum in Florida, as well as her unpublished lecture Frida Kahlo and Surrealism: A Disavowal.