We have long been fascinated by the intriguing life and work of Frida Kahlo, as was made clear by the hugely successful exhibition featuring the Mexican artist’s personal belongings held by the V&A in 2018, the first time Kahlo’s wardrobe was on display outside of her native Mexico. Now fans can go one step further by exploring her colourful Mexico City home in a brand new virtual tour.
The 360-degree video, created by the Frida Kahlo museum in Mexico City, gives viewers the chance to explore Kahlo’s former house and gardens, where the artist spent the majority of her life. The villa, known as the Casa Azul (Blue House), still contains some of the artist’s most important and well known works, including Long Live Life, Frida and the Caesarean Operation, and Portrait of My Father.
Starting off in the lush garden, which features tropical plants and cacti, the tour then moves into the house itself, which includes much of the original furniture from when Kahlo still lived there, as well as numerous personal possessions, Mexican folk art and works by Kahlo’s husband, Diego Rivera. In her bedroom, one of the first rooms you enter, you’ll find her prosthetic leg, which she had custom-made following the amputation of her right leg in 1953.
The house is crammed full of fascinating personal artefacts, including many items of her distinctively colourful clothing, from traditional Mexican dresses and embroidered blouses to her trademark brightly coloured skirts. The tour also takes in her desk, where she painted many of her famous works, and her canary-yellow kitchen, where she and Rivera would spend time with communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who lived next door and with whom Kahlo had a brief affair.Gloriously detailed and well preserved, the new virtual tour provides a fascinating insight into the life of one of modern art’s greatest female figures.
Take the tour at recorridosvirtuales.com
Black and white images courtesy of Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera Archive, Bank of Mexico, Fiduciary in the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Museum Trust
