iMuseo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida KahloSan Ángel Inn, Álvaro Obregón
Studio Evolución. Diseño y vanguardia en la casa de Frida Kahlo
This exhibition has ended.
Design and the avant-garde in Frida Kahlo's home: Bauhaus-style furniture by Gastón Chaussat's Studio Evolución, which Kahlo kept, with objects, models and photos.
Museum websiteMore in Mexico City
Frida Kahlo's bathtub is still in the house. According to testimony the curator cites, Lo que el agua me dio (1938), which hangs in this show, began in it: she took long baths for her health and imagined worlds under the water.
For the first time, Kahlo's half of Juan O'Gorman's twin studios is furnished the way she had it in the late 1930s. You walk into rooms so compact that, in curator Mariano Meza Marroquín's view, they pushed her toward small paintings. It is the rare case of a small flat being good for someone's career. More than 100 pieces fill three sections: tubular furniture by Studio Evolución, the firm Gastón Chaussat founded in 1931 to bring Bauhaus design to Mexico, beside papier-mâché skulls, her perfumes and her easels.
The catch: only two armchairs, a coat rack and a desk are original, and Taller Nacional rebuilt the rest. Entry is 50 pesos, free on Sundays and for students and teachers with ID. It closes on 1 November.
Look for
The bathtub
Look for the tub Kahlo bathed in, still in place; the curator cites testimony that Lo que el agua me dio (1938) was conceived in it.
The four original pieces
Two Studio Evolución armchairs, a coat rack and Diego Rivera's desk survive from the 1930s; everything around them is a Taller Nacional reconstruction, so these are the ones to study up close.
Tubular furniture beside papier-mâché skulls
Bauhaus-style tubular chairs share the rooms with folk-art calaveras, the mix the curator calls Kahlo's "sincretismo".
Perfumes and easels
Perfumes Kahlo used sit alongside her travel easel and a bed easel built for painting lying down.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Nerding Out
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Skip if
You want Kahlo's paintings: this is a furnished house, and most of the furniture is recreated.
Also at Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo
On now nearby
Image credits
4
- Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida KahloLuidger / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Alexandre Estrela. RedSkyFalls: RéplicaCourtesy of Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC)
- El Códice de AzcatitlanCourtesy of Museo Nacional de Antropología
- Julian Rosefeldt. ManifestoCourtesy of Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC)