Frida Kahlo Palazzo Quirinale Rome, wonderful exhibition.

I have been lucky to see this wonderful complete exhibition of Frida Kahlo at the Palazzo Quirinale in Rome. From the exhibition I extracted several key ideas in Frida Kahlo's work.

Firstly she had her own personal vision of the world, she portrayed herself and people she knew, she was open about her sexuality in her painting. Through her work we can see she was questioning ideas of self love, the importance of gender, her strong link to Mexican history, ancient history and folklore; she was very much linked to the environment that surrounded her but also used Catholic iconography in her paintings and was inspired by Italian artists. In her paintings she often used an inscribed banderole (a ribbon-like scroll) and tied-back drapes as used by 19th century Mexican painters at the bottom or top of the paintings to describe the sitter in the portrait or the meaning or purpose of the painting. Also she used tied-back drapes in the background like them as you can see below. Adolfo Best Maugard and his book about bringing back Mexican art to it's native roots in 1923 influenced her strongly.

Her background is very interesting; her father was a Hungarian Intellectual from a Jewish family ( his family moved to Germany), her mother was part Indian from Oaxaca; she was a combination of European and Indian known as mestizo, meaning mixed, and most of her life she lived in the Blue House where she was born. The colours in her work are very vibrant, but there is pain in her work as in her life. I did wonder if this 'pain' aspect in her life was actually being played by her, did she see herself as a martyr or was she playing a part or was it actually how she felt? I feel more inclined on the last option as the genuine one, but I felt a discrepancy between a lot of her work, where there is strong sorrow and pain, and the photos of herself in the exhibitions, smiling and surrounded by friends - it seemed in contrast with the paintings. In her work she writes her own story. I see her portraits as visual illustration books where she shows all the important things that happened in her life or that have badly affected her, and also the people that influenced her, while also engaging with her country, Mexico, and it's past history.

She, like Diego, loved buying Mexican artifacts; she collected Indian crafts and art pieces; also she was the first woman to have tried psychoanalysis. There are drawings in the exhibition (art therapy drawings suggested by her practitioner to help her with her depression) made by Frida in her later years depicting this period. She had lots of mirrors in her house where she would observe herself as an object; reflection and duality are shown in her paintings, reflecting herself in the mirror to affirm her existence, which then gets used in the portrait as self defence; even the costume, the jewellery, the animals in her painting seem to me to show her way of affirming herself and protecting herself with things or animals she loved, as she felt lonely. I do find that her work is open to interpretation due to the different strong symbols in her paintings and one might even project one's own interpretation on the paintings, for example in the painting My Nurse (oil on metal 1937) there is a mother and child theme; some people find this moving, others think it's predominantly about fear; others think it's based on Christian iconography of the Madonna and Child. I do think too she was inspired by Italian art and Christian iconography but she turns it on its head making it her own.

 

One of the most important events in her life was on the 17 of September 1925 when the bus she was on with her then boyfriend, Alejandro Gomez Arias, crashed and she suffered terrible injuries. Arias discovered that Frida had a metal rod going through her abdomen. I have read that it was taken out by someone on the spot with no anaesthetics, awfully her spine was shattered in multiple areas, but I don't think she lost her virginity from a rod in the accident, as is suggested in some books; I think this happened earlier but she might have associated death with sex. Frida had to undergo 32 operations in her life and had three miscarriages.

In the exhibition there is a painting of Arias, and one of the buildings outside the hospital that she saw from her window. There is a self portrait from 1926, her first self portrait which she painted after her accident as she was confined to a bed and was said to be feeling bored and obviously painting would have helped her, taking her mind away from the pain. The portrait is influenced by Italian Renaissance artists such as Botticelli & Bronzino's Eleonora di Toldeo. It has strong European influence due to the longer features, the dressing gown, and smooth skin; this is in contrast with the later portraits which show a strong connection to Mexico and the Aztec culture. But one thing is unique in this portrait from Renaissance painting, firstly it was done by a woman painter, secondly the deep gaze of her dark brown eyes which is in opposition to the languid looks of the Renaissance paintings.

After the accident Frida met Diego, a communist who had serial affairs, a womaniser throughout his life, but then again she had them too, they married in 1922. Diego will be her guide in paintings, also telling her to look in the past history of Mexico for inspiration. In the exhibition I felt his strong presence both inside Frida Kahlo's painting and also in the photographic exhibition of her; he is always present and there are also his paintings, including one of them which is at the beginning of the exhibition and is called Cactus. Ella Wolfe said of Diego 'that for him sex was like urinating' so while Frida had countless operations, both skeletal on her spine and also gynaecological, Diego was continuously having affairs but it's been said he was also very affectionate, generous, and warm but ultimately I don't think she was ever able to get rid of him emotionally, to separate herself from him, although his positive remarks at the beginning pushed and encouraged  Frida to paint more.

Another thing I noticed in the exhibition, and this is about her paintings, is that she liked to paint on metal, meaning a smooth hard surface rather then a canvas which is woven; this is due to the fact that her paintings are very small. I think a larger canvas is more suitable for larger paintings. I was actually shocked about how small some of her paintings actually are, for example Henry Ford Hospital 1932 oil is done on metal during her period in the States she spent 4 years there there is one painting that shows more clearly the duality between life in Mexico and the USA where she is wearing a pink dress.

There is also a surrealist influence in her work which is clearly noticeable in the painting 'What the Water Gave me', 1938 oil on canvas,  combined with elements of Hieronymus Bosch. Her work is detailed, the iconography in the painting is sexual (two women on a mattress), combined with a bit of Gothic horror (silent expression horror movies Nosferatu maybe?1922) where her feet are in a bathtub of nightmares, a Tehuana dress is floating in the water, there is a lot of personal information but at the same time it's also self referential- is it giving a hint about her bisexuality?

One of my favourite paintings in the exhibition is the Self -Portrait with Thorns and Hummingbird 1940. Frida is looking out with sad eyes with her pet monkey (on one shoulder), called Caimito de Guayabal and her black cat. The hummingbird on the necklace stands for the reincarnation of dead soldiers, the butterflies seem more unearthly due to their light colour and are to do with mythical imagery from the Aztecs, but it has vivid colours ( see picture below on the left) unlike Self Portrait with Monkey 1945 (picture below on the right), where the tones are muted to show depression: the vegetation is dense and claustrophobic, it's dry, dead, there is no nourishment inside the painting unlike previous paintings, in this painting the monkey clings to her, she has a sad expression in her eyes.

In the 1940's Frida was ill and spent a long period in bed when she reacted by painting the Little Deer in 1946. In Aztec mythology the Deer stands for the right foot and hand; these were the parts of Frida's body that were in pain.

Again with this self-portrait she is affirming herself in the world and leaving a legacy of her story for posterity.

In the middle of the exhibition there are many photos of Frida with her friends. Between the portraits made by her and the photos I noticed she wore a lot of ruffled skirts and embroidered blouses which were from Isthmus of Tehuantepec, to show her Mexican identity, but also to hide her limp on the injured right leg.

Another powerful image is that 'Of me and My Doll,' painted in 1937, when she had another miscarriage. In the painting she is not  holding a baby in her arms but is sitting next to an ugly ceramic doll. She is smoking with her hand in her lap (defiant posture) and looking straight at the viewer, a sad expression in her eyes. Another similar painting to this one which I liked a lot is that of her and her pet dog called 'Itzucuintli dog with me', 1938. Here again she is not touching her dog but is separated from him, has a sad expression, alone smoking.  One gets the feeling by the way the animals are positioned on the canvas in her paintings that 'they can move' or leave unlike her and they offer her companionship while she is always shown as fixed, immobile, like a Goddess.

Frida's still lives which were also on show in the exhibition are full of sexual references eg 'Still life' 1942, where the papaya is half slashed and seems again a portrait of her physical body. There are also allusions to the life/death cycle, and to earth. Frida also shows flowers as female or male genitals to do with fertility, there is a yin yang presence in her work, light and dark, male and female, life, death which define the world, the sun and the moon. Duality is predominant in her work which goes back to the PreColombian notion of the sun and the moon, between light and dark, sun as in the masculine element and the moon the feminine element..
 

The self portrait of the 'Border Line Between Mexico and The United States 1932', where the sun and the moon are both present in the painting and where Frida is seen holding the flag of Mexico,  shows that her heart is not with the industrial, fast mechanical USA (the American flag is covered in smoke). Mexico and America are shown as separate spaces but  the sun and the moon of Mexico are real. Mexico is shown with rubble, exotic plants with pre-Colombian fertility idols, a country rich in history, while the USA is shown covered in smoke and machines with Ford written on it. The painting is ironic, she is shown as a statue attached to two rods one to Mexico the other to the USA but the generator goes to her and to the exotic plants.

She is wearing a sweet pink dress (the painting is very small) but her nipples are showing through the dress and she is holding again a cigarette in an act of defiance...

Frida Kahlo in one of her diaries talked about the use of vibrant colours and she described them in different ways: Cobalt blue standing for purity of love and electricity.. Magenta: the Aztec colour old Tlapali, the blood of the prickly pear, the oldest and brightest. Leaf Green: science, leaves, sadness, Germany. Yellow: madness, sickness, fear. Green: good warm light then she describes dark green as the colour of good business and bad advertising. Greenish yellow: more madness and mystery. Red blood? Navy blue, distance but also tenderness.

I will end with a picture of Kahlo's Blue House now a Museum and one of Kahlo's prose poems taken from her diary.

My Diego:                               

Mirror of the night.                        

Your eyes green swords inside my flesh,

waves between our hands.

All of you in a space full of sounds –

in the shade and in the light.

You were called AUXCHROME the one who captures color.

I CHROMOPHORE - the one who gives color.

You are all the combinations of numbers. life.

My wish is to understand lines form shades movement.

You fulfill and I receive.

Your word travels the entirety of space and reaches my cells

which are my stars then goes to

yours which are my light.

Ghosts.

Maurice Utrillo Jonas Netter Collection Palazzo Cipolla Rome.

 

In the same exhibition as Modigliani and Soutine were also the figurative paintings by Maurice Utrillo, also part of Jonas Netter Collection. Maurice Utrillo was born in Paris in 1883, the son of Suzanne Valadon (previously called Marie-Clementine Valadon and an impressive woman - her work is on show as well; she was a model and painter and a close friend of Modigliani and Toulouse-Lautrec) and the chronic alcoholic painter Boissy, so he was an illegitimate son as at the time Suzanne Valadon was an unmarried teenager. It's been said Maurice Utrillo was in love with his mother that when he was young he had epileptic fits; prostitutes later on in life used to call him the 'madman' while the kids in the neighbourhood in Montmartre called him 'Citrillo'. His mother introduced him to painting as a form of therapy to calm his nerves when he was young, which remained a life long passion of his but couldn't stop him later in life from suffering from tremors and deliriums. His grandmother used to give him wine to calm him down which eventually made him into an alcoholic. He once was found drinking cologne and turpentine (used to thin colours).

His original name was Maurice Valadon but the Spanish writer and art critic Miguel Utrillo who was a friend of Suzanne Valadon gave the boy his own name out of kindness. By the time he was 18 years old Utrillo was sent to an asylum temporarily. It's in this period that Maurice starts developing painting to keep balanced mentally; this was a turning point for him and it gave him focus; he produced many oil, watercolour paintings, sketches relying solely on postcards he carried with him or on his memory. Like Soutine he became famous around the 1920's and he was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honour. He married Lucie Pauwels but suffered all through out his life with alcoholism; but alcoholism didn't stop him painting, and yes he was self destructive but thanks to his passion for painting, combined with his mother and then his wife helping him, he was able to cope.

All the paintings in the exhibition are of urban scenes ( he didn't paint portraits unlike other artists in the exhibition), many of them are repetitions, generally views of desolate roads, people only seen in the distance with muted winter colours, sad streets, the city buildings of Montmartre are predominant, picturesque before the First world war.

There are also some paintings done in the spring composed with brighter colours but again people only in the distance, empty roads. I was moved by them; the brush stroke is calm, he simplifies what he observes unlike the nightmarish forceful brushstrokes of Soutine ( which I loved too but they are so different) and he has a great sense of colour, he shows Paris under a different light in a period that is no longer there but at the same time he is so modern because the way he simplified the images makes it more appealing to a wider audience, and sadly to forgery.
 

In the exhibition there are also his Corsican landscapes. He did also paint landscapes of Britanny and several cathedrals in France. 1909-1914 were
considered to be his white period; he used zinc 

white sometimes mixed with plaster, he depicted ageing  cracked walls so white tints were predominant in this period and made him famous, while later on he moved to brighter colours which can be clearly seen in the exhibition. He doesn't have a tragic death unlike other artists such for example Modigliani. He dies in peace in his seventies in 1955 in La Vesinet which is really impressive considering the several nervous crises during his lifetime, the addiction to alcohol and distructive behaviour. Art critics usually put his work under post impressionist with an influence from landscape artists of the 18th and 19th centuries, but I would say as he didn't go to an atelier or school to train he has an individual style.

Maurice Utrillo with his favourite cat

 

Hans Hartung Istituto Nazionale Per La Grafica Fontana di Trevi Rome, Italy, amazing FREE Exhibition.

The Hans Hartung exhibition at the Istituto Nazionale Per la Grafica in Rome literally on Fontana di Trevi was a happy surprise both in terms of selection of work (there were pieces which have not been shown to the public before) and the location of the building. I mean it was literally on Fontana di Trevi in Rome. I really don't understand why they weren't more people visiting this amazing free exhibition. I mean as there were only two other people viewing the exhibition at the same time as me I got a private tour of the rooms and the exhibition; the friendly attendant even opened the window for me to see Fontana di Trevi below, stunning views and the flag flapping away on The Quirinale building. The exhibition itself was brilliant; it showed clearly how Hans Hartung (1904-1989) worked (at the end of the exhibition there was a film about him and how he worked in his studio which was really interesting) and it included works from the Hans

Hartung Bergman Foundation Antibes. It included biographic details - what interested me most was that he studied at the Graphical Akademie fur Kunste and in 1925 he went to a class run by Kandinsky but he wasn't convinced of non figurative art with a dogmatic agenda, as he said himself 'his speech on the use and symbolism of the circle, oval, square and rectangle I had neither seduced nor convinced. I had no desire to paint the coils to represent eternity'. Between 1927-1929 he went on holiday in the South of France and studied Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Cubism.  These studies were to influence his work until 1933; he also studied the relationship between mathematics and aesthetics; in 1928, in Monaco, he studied painting techniques & materials with Max Dormer and in 1929 he married Norwegian painter Anna-Eva Bergman. I always enjoy reading about the biography of the artist and his I found interesting especially because I believe we are living in troubled times so I find inspiring an artist who experienced difficulties. The big change in his life was the death of his father which caused him to experience insecurity, and subsequently he had serious nervous problems.  National Socialism was on the rise so he decided to leave Germany and moved to the Balearic Islands with his wife, and his moods improved - as he said himself 'We were living in poverty but life smiled on us again. My mood improved, I found myself a taste for painting', but all of this was short-lived as his assets were blocked in Germany and he was forced to leave the Balearic Islands and go first to Paris then to Stockolm.


L 11, 1957 – lithography

 

Around 1937 he is strongly influenced by the sculptures of Julio Gonzales and at the same time is experiencing extreme poverty and having problems with lack of materials, but it is at this point - I feel - that there is an important change in his work, thanks to his friend called Helion, who tells him to stay faithful not to change mistakes on the canvas or on the drawings and to reproduce mistakes and be natural in his work. Hartung will stick to this way of working till the 1960's. I thought while looking at the exhibition that I did find Hartung's work to be very precise, physical so  opposite to someone who just reproduces mistakes. The most difficult period for Hartung is between 1942-1944 when he gets incarcerated in Gerona, the death of Julio Gonzales whom he admired, and then he gets badly wounded and is operated on his knee with no anaesthetics; all his drawings of this period are lost. Between 1945-1946 he gets the French Nationality Military Medal, the Croix de Guerre and finally the Legion of Honour in1952 has many exhibitions.

In the present exhibition are many lithographs; there are some large works placed opposite smaller works of similar nature contrasting in colours with a minimalist selection of colour mainly simple intertwined stripes or lines, for example black on white or white, blue and black or white black and yellow, but it's all well defined. The works are done on paper and on canvas, they are gestural, but they don't feel heavy, they don't have names, they are called simply H1973-24,73 or L 1974-14,1974;  some are lithographs like L1973-45,1973, others are made using acrylics like T1974-R14 or T1975-R35,1975; there are also some woodcuts, etching acquatint. I am interested in this as I have worked in printmaking myself.

G 8, 1953 - way to sugar and aquatint - two bars

H 1973-26 1973 - woodcut



The 1974-14 1974 - lithography ink - two bars

 

I was also interested in the combination of materials he uses. Sometimes he uses vynil on canvas, other times gesso on board. Some of the works in the exhibition are scratched 'sgraffiato' that he does  quite unusually using a brush. I particularly liked T1963-E25 that you can see below, it gave sense of suspension; I found it to be ethereal, also T1963-45, L120-L93,L106. In all the works I observed a rhythm of different lines or scratches with a dramatic effect and made to be central on the canvas or drawing but I don't feel, as other art critics have said, that they are 'expressionist' as for me they are well thought meaning planned, yes there is a sense of direct feeling but more towards a mimetic activity than expressionism, and it has been recently discovered that he based them on sketches which kind of changes the original dynamic of the work, and yes they are gestural, physical but some of the work actually made me think of nature in a very abstract way, of blades of grass, and one can see clearly he is not interested in observation work or working from memory.

 

 

 

 



 

 

 



 

Chaim Soutine, Jonas Netter Collection, Palazzo Cipollla Museum Rome, Italy. Excellent exhibition.

 

 

I went to Italy for my Easter break. Unfortunately I got a stomach virus so I wasn't feeling great, maybe that's why I had a break from blogging as I was feeling weak, but I was still able to go to exhibitions and being in Rome there were plenty of interesting exhibitions to see. My mum suggested for me to go and view the one on Modigliani & Chaim Soutine at Palazzo Cipolla near the Italian Parliament in the centre of Rome on Via del Corso which was easy to get to. She told me the story of Chaim Soutine, who walked through Poland to get to Paris and arrived dirty covered in parasites. I can't even imagine walking that far, and she also told meet that he kept a carcass of meat in his studio to paint, and he was from Russia and he was Jewish, so his background intrigued me and I have never seen his work before - one more excuse to go and see the exhibition.

 



The Mad Woman

 

I mean the exhibition itself was focused on Modigliani, curated by Marc Restellini and titled 'Modigliani, Soutine and cursed artists from the Netter collection', even if it had very few of his works and there were many other artists working in Paris in the same period and on show. Modigliani settled in Paris Montparnasse in 1906; as Marc Restellinicsates states of that creative period: 'These  tormented spirits express themselves in a painting that feeds on despair. Ultimately, their art is not Polish, Bulgarian, Russian, Italian or French, but absolutely original; simply, it is in Paris that everyone has found the means of expression that best translated vision, their sensuality and dreams to each of them. '

Woman in Green

 In this blog today I will be focusing on the eccentric Chaim Soutine (1893-1943) as he was one of the most important artist of the twentieth century. In the exhibition there are 20 of his works (landscapes, portraits of ordinary people, still lives of carcasses & dead animals).

 

Hanging Hare

The paintings are part of the Jonas Netter collection; he was an Alsatian Jew and one of the most influential collectors of the twentieth century; without him Soutine and Modigliani would never have been known to the public which still shows how important it is for an artist to be discovered by a reputable art dealer even today.

Soutine studied arts in Vilnius School of Drawings and was helped by a Jewish family till he moved to Paris around 1913-1915. At first he studied and attended Fernand Cormon's famous atelier ( Van Gogh studied there, and Toulouse Lautrec & Emile Bernard) but wasn't getting much attention from the teacher, unlike in the Vilnius School, so he decided to study the Masters in the Louvre directly and then what was around him. Later on he used to burn canvases he didn't like, he undressed to paint so he didn't stain the only clothes he had, he was quite introverted and a close friend of Modigliani ( Kisling noted that they “were inseparable spiritual brothers''); he also met Chagall but was never interested in making paintings remembering his homeland like Chagall. This was due to the strict background he came from, Russia now Belarus, born near Minsk in a town called Smilavicy, his large, poor family was Hasidic orthodox Jewish, his father had a bad temper and used to beat Chaim so he felt unsafe at home and spent a lot of time in nature. His art wasn't really the sort of work someone in his family would have supported in persuing because of their orthodox background and  making art in the Livtak cultural tradition was a violation of the Talmud and the second commandment. He showed a portrait to a Rabbi and he got beaten for it. He also experienced persecutions due to his Jewish background by the Russian Government at the time but he was able to channel this angst into his paintings with passion and devotion ( which was much admired by Modigliani) and inspired other Jewish artists later on.

Still Life with Herrings

In the exhibition I viewed the focus on Chaim Soutine is on food. There are natural still lives but not done as before to beautify the pieces (like for example in the work of Dutch Masters where they glorify the food and show how plenty there is). Soutine's attention was instead on the carcasses of animals used as food which can be traced back possibly to his Orthodox Jewish upbringing - the combination of food and ritual - but he goes deeper looking for the ordinary, in a way the essence of the object to transform it into something else, to give the viewer a metaphysical experience he turns the meat into an abstract (photo below).

 

Meat

I mean while I was looking at it I thought I was looking at pieces of vegetation; I only realised it was a carcass of meat by looking closely and because of the title; the colours are actually very vivid. Soutine said that he kept the carcass in his studio to observe the changes in colour of the blood ( the neighbours weren't happy with the smell of rotten meat and complained about it) or to just show not what is there, but what ordinary people ate, to show the life of ordinary people. In another painting on show in the exhibition, for example, there weren't the usual fruits, or luxury items on a well laden table but he painted onions on a cheap wooden table, this made me think of Van Gogh.

I definitely saw an influence there and also of Rembrandt but Soutine makes it his own taking us into a more personal unique space; by placing always one object of cheap onions he is showing the scarcity of food he and others experienced at the time. Sometimes the paintings are done with bright colours, sometimes not, but always using undulating heavy brushstrokes, which give a sense of instability ( as you can see in photos below), a personal touch to the painting that shows that instability is really the reality one lives and is the main focus of the paintings. The instability also gives movement to the painting. It made me think of a painting of a travelling artist who moves from place to place especially the one titled: Up the Hill, below, on an artist exploring his surroundings and seeing instability in them..

Road up the Hill

 But they are not all the same, there is a progression in his work with all an influence from the trips he took to the south of France (1918-1922) which input his work with brighter colours.

 

L'Escalier-Rouge-a' Cagnes

LHomme-Au-Chaeau
 

Showing the viewer hunger, poverty, human suffering at first in a mild way then in later years in a  more forceful, grotesque way which reminds me of  the British painter Bacon, especially the portrait

above.

Some art critics saw links to primitivism and realism but I would say he really doesn't ascribe specifically to any movement, maybe more to abstract expressionism, some label him under expressionism which was seen as being more primitive then the previous theoretical approach of oil painting, expressionism is a wide term that went against an academic approach based on early 20th century Germany, concerned with genuine feelings, nature, spirituality, it was seen as against quick industrialization of Germany; but Soutine didn't go to Berlin he went to Paris maybe attracted by is cultural history appeal and possibly aware of other artists going there from a Jewish background.

 

Soutine's (pic. above) anxieties, nightmarish paintings might be due also to the historical period he was living in which is the consequence of the collapse of different empires (Hapsburg Empire 1273-1918, the Ottoman Empire 1299-1923 and most important the Russian Empire 1721-1917) and his final years under the Nazi regime. In fact in 1937 he had an acclaimed exhibition at the Independent Art show in Paris; sadly the Nazis were taking over France so Soutine had to escape Paris to hide from the Gestapo; he was sleeping in forests, farms, and was helped by Mademoiselle Garde. She was first captured and sent to a camp in the Pyrenees - they never saw each other again. Soutine's life took a turn for the worst with the strain of constantly hiding from the Nazis in outdoor poor conditions, lack of food, and a strong mouth ulcer bothering him, and he wasn't able to go back to Paris to seek help. He died in 1943 and was buried in Montparnasse and  his funeral was attended by Picasso, Max Jocob and Cocteau.

 For a long time, Soutine spoke a mixture of French, Yiddish, and Russian that the French found difficult to understand. I can totally relate to this as a  lot of people expect you to speak languages with no accents but what happenes if you are abroad for a while is that the languages tend to get mixed; he seemed to have the same problem I have. One thing that made me laugh is that one of the pamphlets given out at the exhibition described Soutine as saying; Don't talk to me about that Italian ( Modigliani his spiritual friend..) who nearly made me into an alcoholic..