Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernists

Several months ago I purchased tickets for the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Denver Museum of Art. I had taken my daughter (age 7) to the Claude Monet and Christian Dior exhibits when they were in Denver. Since we had spent time studying Frida Kahlo in our summer artist study unit, I knew she would love visiting the museum.

With the pandemic, we have done, and continue to do very little by way of social situations. Many of our activities take place outside, in fact, it’s been 11 months since we’ve been able to get into Denver at all. We felt that with the safety precautions, the risk of becoming exposed to Covid during this event was minimal. I was pleased with Denver Art Museum for maintaining a small group in the exhibit, encouraging and monitoring social distancing, and enforcing masks.

The small group (less than 20) allowed us to see each piece of artwork and read all the signs, something we aren’t always able to do during larger exhibits.

I was extremely impressed with the historical context each section gave. My knowledge of Mexico after the Mexican Revolution is limited, so having historical information to fall back on while we walked through the museum was helpful to set the stage and have more insight on the collection.

An amazing benefit of visiting artists we’ve studied together in school was doing an in person artist study. Nora narrated The Healer by Diego Rivera to me, paying close attention to the details of the painting and inferring how the subjects felt. The next time we’ll plan to bring her art notebook and soft pastels so she can also draw a painting of her choice.

Several of Frida’s outfits

We have loved reading about Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera over the last several months. Having a good background on Frida and Deigo helped us appreciate their artwork more. It was exciting for Nora to see pieces that she remembered from books and studies.

Some of our favorite books have been:

Frida Kahlo and Her Animalitos: By Monica Brown
Frida Kahlo Bravery Magazine
Frida: Jonah Winter
Little People Big Dreams Frida Kahlo
Diego Rivera His World and Ours: by Duncan Tonatium
Diego: By Jeanette Winter
My Papa Diego and Me: by Guadalupe Rivera Marin

If you’d like to learn more about Mexican culture, recipes, and crafts you can access our free multicultural unit on Mexico here