This autumn, the Bank Austria Kunstforum is presenting the first ever comprehensive Frida Kahlo retrospective in Austria.  Frida Kahlo is a global icon artist, an identification figure of Mexican culture and the forerunner of the feminist movement.  Kahlo’s art is intertwined with the truth in her life. Her paintings and drawings were not only the mirror of her life history, but also marked by physical and mental affliction she suffered from her whole life and the injuries caused by a horrific bus accident.

In the early thirties her paintings show the first tendencies towards surrealism; an approach which produced complex compositions springing out of her inner life.  In her 1940′s self-portraits expression, we see the “authoritarian eye”: Frida takes the stage like a saint “worthy of adulation”; her dominant aura is inescapable.

The exhibition Frida Kahlo contains around 60 paintings, 20 objects and 80 works on paper. These are combined with a selection of photographic documents, compiled by Frida’s great-niece Cristina Kahlo.  Most of Kahlo’s artistic legacy is in Mexico and the USA.  Due to the lack of Kahlo’s European collections, and the sparsity of exhibition projects in Europe, this show is a sensation for Vienna.  The exhibition is being held in cooperation with the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. The exhibition curators in Vienna are Ingried Brugger, Florian Steininger and Helga Prignitz-Poda.

Statement Concerning Change

Frida Kahlo has a pioneer role for so many generations of female artists, she paved the way for crucial positions in feminist art, especially in context with bodyart and performance. Her physical and psychological suffer was depicted in such a direct, violent and surreal way, especially in the painting “unos cuantos piquetitos!” from 1935.  Diego Rivera’s betray with Frida’s younger sister Cristina is transformed in a violent bodilly agitation, in the brutal murder of Frida Kahlo: blood is smeared everywhere, also on the frame, so to pretend the real character of this action.

Florian Steininger, Exhibition Curator in Vienna