Home › Books › Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Gre…
Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist
by
4/99
Critics' Rating Index
54/99
Readers' Rating Index
n/a
Scholars' Citation Index
51/99
Volume of Reviews
32/99
Volume of Reader Ratings
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
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 establishes the foundation of Kahlo's aesthetics––her extensive reading, work with her photographer father, and fascination with nature's interconnectivity, the Aztec embrace of duality, and alchemy––then elucidates the profound impact her sojourns in San Francisco, Detroit, and New York had on the arc of her creativity."
"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."
"This volume itself is nicely designed and decorated with animist devices, though sparsely illustrated—sadly for a book about an artist and her art."
"Featuring meticulous research and elegant turns of phrase, Stahr's engrossing account provides scholarly though accessible analysis for both feminists and art lovers."
"The first major biography since Hayden Herrera's 1983 work presents the artist in all her ferocious complexity."
Preview
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!