NEW YORK, NY.- The first solo presentation of artist Frida Kahlo’s work in New York City in more than 10 years, Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life , focuses on the artist’s engagement with nature in her native country of Mexico, as seen in her garden and decoration of her home, as well as her complex use of plant imagery in her painting. On view from May 16 through November 1, 2015, The New York Botanical Garden’s exhibition is the first to focus exclusively on Kahlo’s intense interest in the botanical world.

Guest curated by distinguished art historian and specialist in Mexican art, Adriana Zavala, Ph.D., the exhibition transforms many of The New York Botanical Garden’s spaces and gardens. It reimagines Kahlo’s studio and garden at the Casa Azul (Blue House) in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory and includes a rare display of more than a dozen original paintings and drawings on view in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library’s Art Gallery.

“Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life is a one-of-a-kind exhibition that provides an in-depth look at Kahlo’s work and artistic environment and also celebrate the energy and sophistication of Mexican culture,” explains Gregory Long, CEO and The William C. Steere Sr. President of the Garden. “Frida Kahlo is a profoundly important artist whose work reflects the complexity of the artist’s life and times. The Garden is proud to present this focused look at Kahlo’s work, which examines how it was influenced by nature.”

“It has been a tremendous privilege to work with the team at The New York Botanical Garden to bring Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life to fruition,” notes Guest Curator Adriana Zavala, Ph.D., “As a scholar and ambassador of Mexican culture, I am proud that this exhibition will enrich our understanding of Frida Kahlo’s connection not just to her native Mexico but to the natural world overall. The research that has gone into building this multifaceted project demonstrates that Kahlo’s life, her times, and her work were, like the natural world itself, a crossroads of transcultural influences.”

THE GARDEN AND STUDIO AT THE CASA AZUL: CONSERVATORY EXHIBITION
The landmark Enid A. Haupt Conservatory at The New York Botanical Garden comes alive with the colors and textures of Frida Kahlo’s Mexico. Visitors entering the exhibition view a reimagined version of Kahlo’s garden at the Casa Azul (Blue House), today the Museo Frida Kahlo, the artist’s lifelong home outside of Mexico City, which she transformed with traditional Mexican folkart objects, colonial-era art, religious ex-voto paintings, and native Mexican plants. Passing through the indigo-blue walls with embellishments in sienna and green, visitors stroll along paths lined with flowers, showcasing a variety of important garden plants from Mexico. A scale version of the pyramid at the Casa Azul—originally created to display pre-Hispanic art collected by Kahlo’s husband, famed muralist Diego Rivera—showcases traditional terra-cotta pots filled with Mexican cacti and succulents. A niche adjacent to the pyramid contains a desk and easel, reminding visitors that Kahlo’s work in her studio was intertwined with her life in her garden. Visitors to the Conservatory experience the Casa Azul as an expression of Kahlo’s deep connection to the natural world and to Mexico.

KAHLO’S WORKS ON VIEW: ART GALLERY EXHIBITION
The LuEsther T. Mertz Library’s Art Gallery at the Garden exhibits 14 of Kahlo’s paintings and works on paper—many borrowed from private collections—highlighting the artist’s use of botanical imagery in her work. Focusing on her lesser-known yet equally spectacular still lifes, as well as works that engage nature in unusually symbolic ways, this grouping of artworks includes Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940); Flower of Life (1944); Still Life with Parrot and Flag (1951); and Self-Portrait Inside a Sunflower (1954). The Art Gallery exhibition, curated by Dr. Zavala, introduces visitors to the importance of plants and nature in Kahlo’s paintings and her life. Also on view are large-scale photographs of Kahlo and the Casa Azul’s garden, which are complemented by photographs of Kahlo taken by photographers and friends such as Nickolas Muray.

THE TWO FRIDAS
An installation of specially commissioned artwork by contemporary Artist in Residence, Humberto Spíndola, is on display in the Britton Rotunda of the Library building. Spíndola, who specializes in sculptural works in paper inspired by Kahlo and her home at the Casa Azul, has re-created an installation of paper dresses that first debuted at the Museo Frida Kahlo in Mexico City in 2009. Inspired by Kahlo’s double self-portrait The Two Fridas (1939), Spíndola re-creates her iconic dresses using a trompe l’oeil effect that closely resembles fabric. He employs acid-free tissue paper and light-resistant pigments to create long-lasting works of fine art evoking traditional 17th- and 18th-century Mexican craft techniques.

THE MEXICO CITY OF FRIDA AND DIEGO
A fascinating panel exhibition in the Arthur and Janet Ross Gallery highlights the museums and other destinations in Mexico City where Kahlo’s and Rivera’s artwork and other artifacts can be viewed, conveying the story and scope of their artistic and intellectual contributions to the cultural life of the city. Sites include Kahlo’s home, the Casa Azul (today the Museo Frida Kahlo); the pair of functionalist structures designed for Rivera and Kahlo by Juan O’Gorman in 1931–32 in San Ángel (today the Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo); the Museo Dolores Olmedo; the Museo Anahuacalli, which houses Rivera’s extensive collection of pre-Hispanic art; and various sites of Rivera’s murals, including the Secretaría de Educación Pública, Palacio Nacional, Palacio de Bellas Artes, and the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso.

POETRY FOR EVERY SEASON: OCTAVIO PAZ POETRY WALK
The poems of important 20th-century Mexican poet and Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz (1914–98), many referencing native plants and flowers, are displayed adjacent to the Haupt Conservatory amid the seasonal beauty of the Garden’s own collections. Co-presented with the Poetry Society of America, the Octavio Paz Poetry Walk is a continuation of the Garden’s Poetry for Every Season series. On Saturday, September 19, at 2 p.m., Poetry Walk curator Rachel Eliza Griffiths, whose work has been influenced by both Paz and Kahlo, will present a reading of selected poems in the Ross Hall.

Frida Kahlo (1907–54), revered as one of the most significant artists of the 20th century, has risen to prominence over the past three decades as an international symbol of Mexican and feminist identity. Important aspects of her life’s story, including her tumultuous relationship with her husband, muralist Diego Rivera (1886–1957), and her struggle with injury and illness, are well known and have been documented in countless biographies, exhibitions, fictional accounts, and analyses of her art. FRIDA KAHLO: Art, Garden, Life will add to this legacy by showcasing the artist’s love of Mexican plants and nature.

Of Kahlo’s approximately 250 works, 55 are self-portraits, and many more are portraits of friends and colleagues, including art patrons. Many of these portraits incorporate plants, animals, and other living things. In her still-life paintings, Kahlo depicts a variety of fruit and flowers, including many native to Mexico, alongside animals, Mexican folk art, and pre-Hispanic objects. Kahlo’s inclusion of plants and nature in her work spans her entire career but her most intensive dedication to the still-life genre dates to the 1940s and 1950s, particularly as her health declined and she was increasingly confined to her home and garden, which underwent its most significant period of development during the 1930s and 1940s.