The Ordinary Lives of Extraordinary Artistes Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo

At this hour, the Mexican Embassy in Belize is unveiling two separate photographic exhibits at the Mexican Institute of Cooperation in Belize City as part of their year-long celebration of Belize and Mexico’s diplomatic relations established in 1981. The first are photographs of two celebrated figures of the Mexican art world: muralist Diego Rivera and painter Frida Kahlo. They were married between 1929 and her death in 1954 except for a brief separation due to divorce and had a stormy relationship, but they also produced some of their finest works during that period. Hugo Juarez Carrillo tells us more about what these candid snapshots represent.

Hugo Juarez Carrillo

Hugo Juarez Carrillo, Press and Consular Officer, Mexican Embassy

“In this case we’re not presenting pictures of their work – their work is very well known – but pictures of their lives; of their families, where they grew up, and the way that they interlinked their lives and they interlinked at the same time their political lives that was very active, because they were Communists, both of them, in a time when Communism was a bad word in the United States, and they were very brave in order to do so, in order to fight for their beliefs. What they’re going to see is that they’re just people, and they had a life together; that they are not that type of monster that you could think about somebody that is painting these large murals. And you will see the familiar surroundings of their lives – their life in common and their family lives, separated and together; when she was a child, when he was a child and the way they interlinked their lives in order to create one of the most powerful couples that Mexican art have ever seen.”