Frida Kahlo & Georgia O'Keeffe' s relationship
09 April 2020
Last 20th of March Karen Chernick published an interesting article about the formative friendship between Frida and Georgia O'Keeffe, inspired by new details found in "Frida in America" (2020), a new book about Frida’s first trip to the United States—from 1930 to 1933, accompanying her husband Diego Rivera on multiple mural commissions—describing the friendship between a 24-year-old Kahlo, then barely known as a painter, and a venerated and successful 44-year-old O’Keeffe.
The two women were quite similar in many ways—both played with fashion, dressing themselves in striking ways outside the mainstream feminine vogue; both pursued careers of their own while married to older, unfaithful, and powerful male artists.
“Both were fearless, flamboyant, and very powerful personalities,” explains Linda Grasso, author of Equal under the Sky: Georgia O’Keeffe and Twentieth-Century Feminism (2017). “They automatically would have been attracted to each other.”
Cick the link below for the complete article.
The Youtube video below shows Lisa Small, Senior Curator of European Art at the Brooklyn Museum presenting an illustrated talk about Georgia O'Keeffe and Frida Kahlo and their self-crafted personas. She provides a behind-the-scenes look at how museum exhibitions that combine art, clothing, photography, and other elements enrich and expand our understanding of artists.
Two recent exhibitions, "Georgia O'Keeffe: Art, Image, Style" and "Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving," have explored this phenomenon, revealing how each artist's carefully considered mode of dress--O'Keeffe’s plain, black wrap dresses and Kahlo's colorful Mexican huipiles--was an integral part of their creative output and identity. Lisa Small, who worked on both of these exhibitions, is Senior Curator of European Art at the Brooklyn Museum.
