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Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist

Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist

by Celia Stahr

St. Martin's Press ·2020 ·400 pages
Maybe Someday
Maybe Someday
I Index
29/99
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4/99

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Near the Top

54/99

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About This Book

The riveting story of how three years spent in the United States transformed Frida Kahlo into the artist we know today Mexican artist Frida Kahlo adored adventure. In November, 1930, she was thrilled to realize her dream of traveling to the United States to live in San Francisco, Detroit, and New York. Still, leaving her family and her country for the first time was monumental. Only twenty-three and newly married to the already world-famous forty-three-year-old Diego Rivera, she was at a crossroads in her life and this new place, one filled with magnificent beauty, horrific poverty, racial tension, anti-Semitism, ethnic diversity, bland Midwestern food, and a thriving music scene, pushed Frida in unexpected directions. Shifts in her style of painting began to appear, cracks in her marriage widened, and tragedy struck, twice while she was living in Detroit. Frida in America is the first in-depth biography of these formative years spent in Gringolandia, a place Frida couldn't always understand. But it's precisely her feelings of being a stranger in a strange land that fueled her creative passions and an even stronger sense of Mexican identity. With vivid detail, Frida in America recreates the pivotal journey that made Senora Rivera the world famous Frida Kahlo.


Reviews

"Stahr brings new clarity to Kahlo's life and genius for creating audacious autobiographical tableaux which pose resounding questions about history, justice, gender, spirituality, and freedom."

Donna Seaman· Booklist Read review ↗ Near the Top

"For the broader dimensions of her traumatic life and fierce courage, readers might turn to Hayden Herrera's 1983 biography, Frida, published before Fridamania attained its current frenzy — a phenomenon owing in no small part to her art's congruence with current ideas about gender politics and cultural identity."

Carolyn Burke· The New York Times Read review ↗ Maybe Someday

"Stahr...captures Frida Kahlo...in all her ambiguity at age 23, when she embarked on her first American tour with her new husband, famous muralist Diego Rivera ..."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Near the Top

"This volume itself is nicely designed and decorated with animist devices, though sparsely illustrated—sadly for a book about an artist and her art."

Philip Kopper· The Minneapolis Star Tribune Read review ↗ Maybe Someday

"Featuring meticulous research and elegant turns of phrase, Stahr's engrossing account provides scholarly though accessible analysis for both feminists and art lovers."

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Maybe Someday

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