The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait
Amazon.com: Frida Kahlo's diary, like her art, is painted in breathtakingly vivid colors. It covers her tumultuous last decade and encompasses love letters, political musings on Communism, and resplendent paintings. The paintings, peopled with mythic figures, self-portraits, and monsters, articulate Kahlo's fantastic visions. One drawing melds a procession of crying faces onto an intertwined couple surrounded by body parts, only to dissolve into a mass of roots and dendrites.
In the introduction, Carlos Fuentes writes, "...a streetcar crashed into the fragile bus she was riding, broke her spinal column, her collarbone, her ribs, her pelvis.... The impact of the crash left Frida naked and bloodied, but covered with gold dust." Her paintings depict her bodily experience, from anguish to sensuality. Kahlo said, "I never painted dreams, I painted my own reality." This visionary ability earned her a place among the surrealists.
Kahlo's prose delves into the associations between images and words, feelings and thought. Her writings shed welcome light on her active intelligence and provide an outline of the events of her life. This Abradale edition features plates reproducing the pages of the diary, and essays by Carlos Fuentes and Sarah Lowe that place it in the context of Mexican art, politics, and history. It is a magical work that adds to an understanding not only of Kahlo's work, but of her interior world as well. --Madeline Crowley
Product Description:
Published in its entirety, Frida Kahlo's amazing illustrated journal documents the last ten years of her turbulent life. These passionate, often surprising, intimate records, kept under lock and key for some 40 years in Mexico, reveal many new dimensions in the complex personal life of this remarkable Mexican artist. The 170-page journal contains the artist's thoughts, poems, and dreams-many reflecting her stormy relationship with her husband, artist Diego Rivera-along with 70 mesmerizing watercolor illustrations.
The text entries, written in Frida's round, full script in brightly colored inks, make the journal as captivating to look at as it is to read. Her writing reveals the artist's political sensibilities, recollections of her childhood, and her enormous courage in the face of more than 35 operations to correct injuries she had sustained in an accident at the age of 18. This intimate portal into her life is sure to fascinate fans of the artist, art historians, and women's culturalists alike.
Subjects: Biography & Autobiography, History Of Art / Art & Design Styles, Individual artists, Art, Art & Art Instruction, Artists, Architects, Photographers, Individual Artist, Art / General, Art / Individual Artist, Biography & Autobiography / Artists, Architects, Photographers, General, Diaries, Mexico, Painters, Surrealism,
Beautiful
This book is simply beautiful. I especially love that it's a full color reproduction and then an English translation follows. If you are Frida devotee, I suggest getting this book.
art lovers delight
for those who love the work of frida kahlo this book has lots to look at im very pleased that i found it
I adore her even more.
Frida Kahlo's diary has amplified my admiration for her. Her beautifully disturbing drawings and poetic words in this book are more than what I had expected. Though her handwriting is hard to read at times, the translations in the back are a big help. I shall cherish this book for a long time.
a MUST
When I find out there was a book of all of Frida's actual writings and drawings from her diary, I was amazed! And this book totally fit all my expectations. It includes everything from her infamous red leather bound journal that she sought refuge in until the final moments of her life. You can actually see the ink from the next page leaking through the page before it, so you feel like your reading the actual thing. Its in big, bold, deep colors just how Frida liked it, and it translates and explains everything in english in a detailed and sufficient way. Definitely a MUST for all fans of the AWESOME Frida Kahlo =)
Exceptional reproduction of actual diary pages, in full
Enrique Torres' review is 100% accurate, so I just want to add a few additional comments.
The reproduction of the diary pages is nothing short of amazing - apparently scanned with a high quality scanner, or perhaps photographed digitally or with film and then digitized. The colors of both the writing and the images appear exceptionally accurate - Frida used many different colored pencils in her diary. Even penciled notations look like pencil, ballpoint ink looks like ink, and all pages are printed on high-quality semi-gloss paper.
The second half, which contains the English translations, also contains small black & white reproductions of each page translated and of each image described/explicated. Makes it easy to return to the first half and look at the original full-color page.
CAVEAT & RECOMMENDATION: The book I have is the 2005 hardback ed. published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. I have not seen nor can I speak of any other published editions. I would buy this edition - the price is more than reasonable and the quality top-notch.
