Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón, known as Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) was born on 6 July 1907 in Coyoacán, Mexico to a Mexican mother and a German father. Kahlo’s artistic vocation arose in childhood and was nurtured in the bosom of her nuclear family, fostered by her father, a renowned photographer and an amateur painter. Driven by her fervent curiosity and fascination with the different subjects of artmaking, she studied the history of Western art, reading illustrated biographies of Leonardo Da Vinci, Rembrandt van Rijn and Albrecht Dürer. As a child, however, she suffered from polio and at the age of 18 was the victim of a serious bus accident which caused her lifelong chronic pain. While it is certain that Kahlo suffered greatly from her illness through these years, it is no less certain that she remained firm in her will to overcome these adversities and continue painting. In the years that followed, the outspoken Kahlo joined the Mexican Communist Party, and increasingly involved herself in the art world of Mexico City. Through this scene, she met the famed muralist Diego Rivera that she would marry in 1929. A year later and until 1933, they would emigrate to the United States, living in San Francisco, Detroit and New York, an experience which would expand her artistic horizons.
Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Sofía Bassi, Alice Rahon, Bridget Bate Tichenor, María Izquierdo
Mystical voyages, chimerical creatures, and fantastical landscapes: the imagery crafted by women Surrealists working in Mexico from the 1930s onwards reflect some of the movement’s most inventive and profound compositions. Surrealism, established when André Breton published his 1924 Surrealist Manifesto, swiftly permeated the Parisian avant-garde. Amid the Spanish Civil War and the looming threat of World War II, many artists fled Europe for the Americas. Mexico City became an especially favored refuge and transformed into an artistic sanctuary for natives and European émigrés alike. There, the Surrealists found a thriving community of avant-garde artists and intellectuals, and a place that offered diverse mythologies and dramatic landscapes that profoundly resonated with their sensibilities.
Women artists Leonora Carrington, Alice Rahon, and Remedios Varo settled in Mexico by the early 1940s. In their native Europe, women artists in the Surrealist group were often reduced to embodiments of pure feminine instinct, undercutting the intellectual rigor of their artistic contributions. In Mexico City, however, they found and seized upon a level of artistic freedom, and support from women-owned galleries, that allowed them to develop a highly unique creative language, delving into unconventional themes that resonated deeply with their surroundings and personal experiences. They also encountered an existing contingent of renowned female painters like Frida Kahlo and Maria Izquierdo. While Kahlo drew inspiration from her own life, producing self-portraits with piercing analytical power that drew on Mexican folk painting, scientific drawings, photography and the Old Masters, Izquierdo created dream-like paintings that blend Surrealist elements with traditional Mexican motifs. The European Surrealists shared a deep interest in the subconscious and symbolism: Varo explored intimate mythologies similar to Kahlo’s self-analysis, while Carrington and Alice Rahon connected global myths with indigenous traditions. Their fascination with the natural and occult realms led to rich artistic expressions deeply influenced by their Mexican context, delving into esoteric knowledge, including indigenous cosmologies and metaphysics.
Living in exile proved extraordinarily fruitful creatively for now-renowned artists like Carrington, Varo and Rahon, as well as lesser known artists like Bridget Bate Tichenor; they, along with Kahlo, Izquierdo and Sofía Bassi crafted magical worlds and developed their distinctive visual language. This exhibition, held concurrently with the Frieze Art Fair and including works that span from the 1930s to the 1980s, captures and expands the vibrant evolution and depth of the Surrealist movement as expressed by women artists in Mexico.
Leonora Carrington (1917 - 2011) was born in Lancashire to a wealthy Anglo-Irish family. During her childhood, she found solace in Celtic and Irish folklore to escape the societal expectations of her traditional family. The legends these tales recounted, in which people, animals, fairies, goddesses and druids pursued fantastical adventures and lived in harmony, profoundly impacted Carrington's imagination, inspiring her throughout her career. After tumultuous school years, she moved to London in 1935 to study at Amédée Ozenfant’s new painting academy. There, Carrington visited the First International Surrealist Exhibition and met Max Ernst. With him, her new lover, she fled to Paris in 1937.
“The dream world and the real world are the same.” Remedios Varo
Sofía Bassi (1913 - 1998) was a Mexican painter and writer, recognized both for her surrealist art as well as her tumultuous personal life. She was born in 1913 in Camerino Z. Mendoza, Veracruz. While she studied philosophy in university, she started to teach herself how to paint in later part of her life. In 1965, she held her first solo show, a tremendous success, 40 of the 45 works were sold. The following year, she exhibited at the Galería Plástica in Mexico, and shortly after, her work was featured at the Lys Gallery in New York. However, her artistic journey did not unfold as planned. In 1968, she turned herself in to the police for the murder of her son in-law, the Count Cesare d’Acquarone. The death of the Italian aristocrat would attract worldwide press attention, with many speculating that she had taken the blame for her daughter. She spent the next five years in prison where she created 275 paintings inscribed E.L.C. (“en la cárcel”), two murals and the set for the monologue play Adriano VII. One of these murals, now displayed at the Acapulco Municipal Presidency, was painted in collaboration with other famous Mexican artists such as Alberto Gironella, Francisco Corzas, Rafael Coronel who came to visit her in prison. Upon her release, she continued to paint but also devoted herself to social work. She became a member of the World Committee on Human Rights and in 1991 received a medal from the Mexican government for the work she had achieved. Two years prior to her death she designed her famous Sarcófago de huevo, a giant hollow fiberglass egg in which her ashes could be deposited, and which was in fact used at her funeral.
Alice Rahon (1904-1987) was born on June 8, 1904 in Chenecey-Bouillon in eastern France. In her twenties she moved to Paris, creating hats for the Surrealist-influenced designer Elsa Schiaparelli, modeling for Man Ray and befriending artists like Joan Miró. In 1931, she met Austrian painter Wolfgang Paalen, who introduced her to the Surrealist circle led by André Breton; they married three years later. During the following years in Paris, Rahon mostly focused on writing poetry, publishing À même la terre (On the Bare Ground), with an engraving by Yves Tanguy in 1936 and Sablier couché (Hourglass Lying Down), with an etching by Miró in 1938. In company of her husband and the Swiss photographer Eva Sulzer, Rahon was invited by Frida Kahlo to visit Mexico City in 1939. Traveling through Alaska and down the Pacific Coast, they made it down to the city where she would spend the rest of her life and the place where she would dedicate herself exclusively to painting, transitioning from poetic to visual imagery. Paalen’s anthropological admiration for the sacred and spiritual context of the masks, poles, regalia and objects created on the Northwest coast during the cultural flowering of the nineteenth century would widely influence Rahon’s transition to visual art.
Bohemian, chic, stunningly beautiful and eccentric, Bridget Bate Tichenor (1917-1990) led an exciting and unusual transient life. Born in Paris to a prominent British family she spent her youth traveling between France, the United Kingdom and Italy, learning about the techniques of the Renaissance masters and being mentored by Surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico. Introduced by her mother who worked for Coco Chanel, Tichenor worked as a model for the French designer and other luxury brands, having her photographs taken by Irving Penn and Man Ray. While living in New York until her departure from the city, she would also become a fashion editor for Vogue. These early influences from Italian artistic techniques, which she continued to study under the tutelage of Paul Cadmus in New York, and from the world of fashion, would continue to impact her artistic style throughout her career. After living in New York and California, and following her second divorce, Tichenor moved to Mexico in 1953. Through her uncle, Edward James, an affluent British poet and patron of the Surrealists, Tichenor first met Leonor Fini and then befriended other artists associated with the movement –including Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, and Alice Rahon.
María Izquierdo (1902 - 1955) was born in San Juan de los Lagos, a small town famous for its annual pilgrimage of the Virgin Mary. Married at a young age, she moved to Mexico City with her husband in 1923. The cultural renaissance of the city, utterly different from the intense conservatism of her earlier years, nurtured her artistic inspiration and personal liberation. Five years after her move, she had divorced her husband and was enrolled as an art student at the Academia de San Carlos in 1927. The following year after her admission Diego Rivera was appointed director and he declared his admiration for her work. After a short-lived academic experience, Izquierdo started a relationship with the renowned painter Rufino Tamayo. During their four year relationship, their respective works would influence each other, similarly mirrorring tendencies of the European avant-garde while also incorporating a more nationalist character.
Image Credits
Exhibition Thumbnail Image (in the same sequence as the images shown)Installation view of Imaginary Worlds: Female Surrealism at Salon Hannam 2024, 4–14 September, 2024artwork © Sotheby's
Photo: Creative Silver