The Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) is one of the most famous artists of all time. However, while much has been written about Kahlo’s striking self-portraits (of which some 80 are known), her still-life paintings (of which 40 or so are documented) have not been subjected to such close scrutiny until now. In this groundbreaking study, noted Kahlo scholar Salomon Grimberg explores in detail and interprets all of the artist’s still lifes, including some that have come to light only recently. Offering provocative new perspectives on Kahlo’s creative process, and revealing how the still lifes reflected her internal reality and complement her self-portraits, this book represents an indispensable contribution to the literature on an enduringly popular artist.

The only complete study of Kahlo’s still lifes, indispensable to understanding the artist, her internal reality and her work
Offers original interpretations by a leading authority on Kahlo
Includes stunning reproductions of every known still life painted by Kahlo, as well as other relevant works and photographs

110 illustrations, 60 in colour

42 selected master works by legendary Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. A special bargain in first-class Schirmer/Mosel quality.

Frida Kahlo - painter of pictures expressing the burdens that weighed upon her soul

The Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) is one of the most important 20th-century painters, and one of the few Latin American artists to have achieved a global reputation. In 1983 her work was declared the property of the Mexican state.

Kahlo was one of the daughters of an immigrant German photographer and a Mexican woman of Indian origin. Her life and work were more inextricably interwoven than in almost any other artist's case. Two events in her life were of crucial importance. When she was eighteen, a bus accident put her in hospital for a year with a smashed spinal column and fractured pelvis. It was in her sick bed that she first started to paint. Then, aged twenty-one, she married the world-famous Mexican mural artist Diego Rivera. She was to suffer the effects of the accident her whole life long, and was particularly pained by her inability to have children.

Kahlo's arresting pictures, most of them small format self-portraits, express the burdens that weighed upon her soul: her unbearable physical pain, the grief that Rivera's occasional affairs prompted, the sorrow her childlessness caused her, her homesickness when living abroad and her longing to feel that she had put down roots, profound loneliness. But they also declare her passionate love for her husband, her pronounced sensuousness, and her unwavering survival instinct.

About the Series:
Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Art Series features:

•a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural and historical importance of the artist
•approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions
•a concise biography

The author:
Andrea Kettenmann (born in 1959) studied art history in Gießen, Göttingen and Heidelberg before joining the art history department of the University of Hamburg. In 1986 she visited Mexico on a fellowship, and now lives there, working as a freelance art historian. She has now worked on a number of exhibitions and catalogues, including the catalogue for the retrospective on Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo’s husband, in Detroit.

They met in 1928, Frida Kahlo was then 21 years old and Diego Rivera was twice her age. He was already an international reference, she only aspired to become one.
An intense artistic creation, along with pain and suffering, was generated by this tormented union, in particular for Frida. Constantly in the shadow of her husband, bearing his unfaithfulness and her jealousy, Frida exorcised the pain on canvas, and won progressively the public’s interest. On both continents, America and Europe, these commited artists proclaimed their freedom and left behind them the traces of their exceptional talent.
In this book, Gerry Souter brings together both biographies and underlines with passion the link which existed between the two greatest mexican artists of the 20th century.