Frida Kahlo—Revolutionary explores the singular vision of an artist caught in the contested worlds of postrevolutionary Mexico, communism, and surrealism.
Author Dawn Ades traces Frida Kahlo’s intellectual and artistic development in the context of Mexican cultural nationalism, left-wing politics, and her personal experiences of illness, disability, and grief, as well as her later engagement with the surrealists and renewed involvement with the Communist Party.
Presented in three parts, the book first looks at Kahlo’s political and artistic awakening in a newly postrevolutionary society. In the second part, close readings unpack her paintings’ dense, layered symbolism and often highly personal relationship to the popular traditions and visual languages of Mexico. The final section considers her association with surrealism and the evolving connections between her art and her politics.
It incorporates text from Ades’s essay Kahlo, Surrealism, and the Mexican Revolution, originally published in 2016 for the exhibition Frida Kahlo at the Dalí at The Dalí Museum in Florida, as well as her unpublished lecture Frida Kahlo and Surrealism: A Disavowal.
Contributors
Dawn Ades
Author
Dawn Ades is a fellow of the British Academy, a former trustee of the Tate Gallery, and a professor of art history at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. She has written extensively on Dada, surrealism, photography, and women artists, among other topics. Her many books also include Dalí and Photomontage, both in the World of Art series.
