Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera On Display at Art Gallery of Ontario
Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) is showing the world that sometimes it's not just about the art, it's about how the art is displayed. The world may know Frida Kahlo's work quite well, and her unibrow even better, but chances are they've never seen her work like this. Paired with her husband Diego Rivera's work, AGO has curated a killer collection from both of their lifetime collections. And for many, seeing Rivera's art will be equally as impressive as Kahlo's. Even though he may be lesser known today, that was not the case when they first met and he was a prodigy who worked with Picasso.
What's most important for the AGO's exhibit however is how they've displayed the married couple's work unlike ever before. Opting away from the blasé, been-there done-that version, a.k.a. hanging their works in chronological order, AGO tells new stories by combining both collections as one storyboard. They've combined the works together in new and unexpected ways in hopes of telling a story and gaining new perspectives.
More than 80 pieces of art and over 60 photographs make up the new exhibit Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting. A press release from RGO explains, "Assembled from three distinguished Mexican private collections on Mexican art, the Museo Dolores Olmedo, Colección Gelman, and Galería Arvil, the exhibition provides the opportunity to view almost one quarter of Kahlo's entire body of work and a range of Rivera's painting styles from his early cubist period and studies for his Mexican murals to his portraits and later landscapes. The exhibit runs through January 20, 2013.
