Frida Kahlo. Self-portrait with Monkey. From the Museo Dolores Olmedo, Xochimilco, Mexico

This is the first display of a work by the famous Mexican artist in the State Hermitage from the collection of the Museo Dolores Olmedo in Xochimilco, Mexico.

The biography of Frida Kahlo, which became one of the great cultural myths of the 20th century, is highly dramatic. She was born on 6 June 1907, in Coyoacán on the outskirts of Mexico City, but later changed her year of birth to 1910 – the date of the Mexican Revolution.

Kahlo received no systematic education in art and her turning to creative activity was prompted by a tragic chance occurrence. On 17 September 1925, the 18-year-old Frida was involved in a serious accident: a bus in which she was a passenger was in a crash with a tram. Frida suffered very serious injuries, the consequences of which continued to beset her all her life. For a year she was bed-ridden. So as to enable her to draw lying down, her father constructed a frame for her and attached a mirror to her bed. Her first work was a self-portrait. Subsequently the self-portrait became the main genre in her oeuvre, her trademark.

Despite the fact that Frida Kahlo’s works speak of physical pain, tragic events in the artist’s life and her mental torments, they are devoid of psychologism. The primary role in conveying her emotional state is taken by various attributes from her personal “dictionary of symbols and allegories”. Each object plays its part: the ribbon in her hair, the outfit, the things and creatures around her are combined according to the laws of collage in a single picture space in order to tell their own stories about Frida.

In Self-Portrait with Monkey those objects are a nail, the monkey, a pre-Columbian sculpture and a dog, which are linked together by a yellow ribbon. The nail driven into the wall is perhaps an allusion to the Mexican idiom estar clavado – literally “to be nailed”, metaphorically “to be deceived, let down”. Frida Kahlo’s husband, the famous Mexican mural-painter Diego Rivera, was for many years the cause of her not unfounded jealousy and emotional tribulations. They married in 1929, when he was 43 and she was 22. Frida described her marriage in this way: “There have been two great mishaps in my life: one was when the bus hit the tram; the other is Diego.”

A little monkey is a frequent motif in Frida Kahlo’s work. In contrast to the Western European tradition, where monkeys are a symbol of sensuality, in her works it is always a selflessly devoted friend, a substitute for the child that Frida could never have. In La Casa Azul, the “Blue House” in which Frida and Diego lived, there were a great many pets: parrots, monkeys and Mexican hairless Xoloitzcuintli dogs roamed freely around the place. Xoloitzcuintli, whose name comes from the god Xolotl and itzcuīntli, meaning “dog” in the Nahuatl language, were in Aztec mythology the earthly embodiments of Xolotl, the god of thunderstorms and death, and thus sacred animals. Like the pre-Columbian sculpture from the artist’s collection they are reminders of Mexico’s ancient culture, which was respected by the nation’s entire cultural elite at the time and was for Frida an important part of her personal history. This painted message proclaims: Frida again does not trust Diego, but she draws strength from her past and from those who are loyal to her.

Telling of her pain time and again, Frida Kahlo pushed back the boundaries of art, giving space to the hidden, the ignored – the personal. And her uncompromising, disturbing, gifted account laid the foundation for the aesthetic narrative of female artists in the 20th century.

The exhibition Frida Kahlo. Self-Portrait with Monkey has been prepared by the State Hermitage’s Department of Contemporary Art as part of the Hermitage 20/21 project that aims to collect, exhibit and study art of the 20th and 21st centuries. The exhibition curator is Yekaterina Vladimirovna Lopatkina, a Candidate of Art Studies and deputy head of the Department of Contemporary Art.

Museo Dolores Olmedo Patino

The museum named after Dolores Olmedo Patino (1908–2002) opened in 1994. In 1962 the successful Mexican businesswoman acquired an old mansion in Xochimilco, a southern district of Mexico City, which 22 years later she turned into a museum. The museum possesses 137 paintings by Diego Rivera and 25 by Frida Kahlo. Besides those, it displays works by other Mexican artists, more than 900 pre-Columbian figurines that Dolores Olmedo collected, works of art from the colonial and modern eras and a collection of oriental art, as well as animal statues in the museum garden. Attached to the museum is a gallery devoted to Mexican folk culture. The address of the museum site is http://www.museodoloresolmedo.org.mx.