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The Palais Galliera, Paris Fashion Museum, is organizing this fall for the first time in France an exhibition dedicated to Frida Kahlo, in close collaboration with the Museo Frida Kahlo.
This exhibition entitled “Beyond Appearances” allows us to enter into the inti- macy of the artist, icon of Mexican art and Mexicanness.
To understand her personality and her career, two hundred objects are exhibited in biographical and thematic order, clothing, accessories, correspondence, cos- metics, medicines and medical prostheses.
All these intimate symbols had been placed under seal when she died in 1954 by her husband Diego Rivera, the giant of Mexican painting, and were rediscovered fifty years later, in 2004.
Ethnic dresses, pre-Columbian jewelry, hand-painted corsets, films and photo- graphs, the legacy that Frida left us reflects her life, her sufferings and her illnesses.
Born in Cayoacàn, Mexico in 1907 in her house, Casa Azul, where she died in 1954, Frida Kahlo’s life was marked by two particularly painful episodes. At the age of six she contracted poliomyelitis, her back was affected and her leg damaged.
She then invents an imaginary friend to overcome daily difficulties and deceive her loneliness.
She contemplates herself in her mirror and it is her double who thus appears in her paintings. Twelve years later, she suffered a terrible bus accident that forced her to stay in bed for several months. She has to wear corsets and drop out of medical school. This long journey of suffering leads her to escape into a universe of colors that is unique to her.
Frida Kahlo by Julien Levy, circa 1938
© DR, private collection © Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo archives, Bank of México, fiduciary in the Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera Museums Trust