Art in the time of Kahlo

Executive Director, Sarah Hall, June 29, 2025 

Frida Kahlo: Picturing an Icon provides an immersion in the story of Frida Kahlo’s life and art through her personal photographs. We learn about her family, marriage, and career by looking at images that she treasured—some have holes from being pinned to the walls of her room (and sometimes directly to her bed). The photographs are fascinating and beautiful, and many are also works of art in themselves—taken by masters of the medium, including Kahlo’s father Guillermo (1871–1941), and friends like Tina Modotti (1896–1942), Lola (1903–1993) and Manuel Álvarez Bravo (1902–2002), Carl van Vechten (1880–1964), Julien Levy (1906–1981), and others.

While we don’t have any Frida Kahlo paintings in the exhibition, we do have a variety of other works in our collection that I have been thinking about as we have been “living with” Frida Kahlo through the installation of the exhibition and its first weeks open to the public.


Gustave Courbet (French, 1819-1877), Landscape, C.1873-1875. Oil on canvas.
Washington County Museum of Fine Arts. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William H. Singer, Jr., Olden Norway, 1931, A03

When I think about artists known for political activism, I immediately think of French Realist Gustave Courbet (1819–1877), his socialist politics and his intense attachment to his home region in France. His love of the Franche-Comté region of his birth, which he painted over and over again from memory while in political exile, reminds me of Kahlo’s pride in her Mexican heritage, her activism (she attended a political protest just five days before her death), and her imagery, which was richly inspired by the folk traditions of Mexico. You can learn more about our Courbet by listening to an audio clip here.


Philip Guston, Portrait of Shanah, 1941. Oil on canvas. Museum Purchase, 1948, A566

I also think about Philip Guston (1913–1980)—probably no surprise there. In 1932, Guston and his friend Reuben Kadish (1913–1992) created a mural for the communist-affiliated John Reed Club of Los Angeles with potent anti-racist imagery. The mural was destroyed by the violent anti-communist Red Squad of the local police. In the aftermath of this drama, Guston and Kadish went to Mexico to paint The Struggle against Terror, an anti-fascist mural. They were recommended for the job by famed Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974), who they were acquainted with from projects in California. They also received a recommendation from Diego Rivera (1886–1957). While they knew Rivera, and likely spent time with both Rivera and Kahlo, the younger artists later described Rivera as an opportunist who was primarily busy entertaining tourists.


Reuben Kadish, Untitled, 1948. Oil on canvas with sand. Museum partial purchase and gift of the Reuben Kadish Art Foundation, New York, New York, 2005, A4033.

You can see Guston’s early painting style, blocky and reminiscent of the type of figuration seen in murals, reflected in his Portrait of Shanah in our collection. Next to Shanah hangs a piece by his friend Reuben Kadish, whose odd, skeletal abstract figure bears some resemblance to the kind of visceral body imagery that interested Kahlo. Kadish was deeply interested in prehistoric and pre-Columbian art, and his use of sand to create texture in this painting gives it an elemental quality that seems to connect both the bold imagery and the materials themselves to the earth. 


Sarah Stafford Goodwin, Farm Scene, Study for a Mural (Post Office, Llangollen, Delaware), 1937. Oil on Masonite. Gift of Allen Neville and Allison Lowery

In the same gallery, we have a mural study by Sarah Stafford Goodwin (1912–2000). Goodwin’s charming, folksy frieze of agricultural life painted in 1937 connects her to American Regionalism, a style which bears similarities to the interests of Mexican artists of the same period. Goodwin’s painting served as a sketch for a much larger post office mural in Llangollen, Delaware, and was possibly commissioned by the WPA (Works Progress Administration). 

The American social realism that burgeoned during the Great Depression was elevated and propagated through support from government programs like the WPA and is closely tied to the Mexican mural movement that flourished from the1920s to the 1950s—when the Mexican government actively commissioned artists for large public art projects intended to unify the country in the years following the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920). The success of Mexico’s government sponsored public art provided inspiration for later public art programs in the United States.

Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo’s husband, was one of the “big three” Mexican muralists. The “big three”—Rivera, Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco (1883–1949) were international stars by the late 1920s, with some sources claiming that Rivera was the most famous artist in the world at the time of his marriage to Frida Kahlo in 1929. In post-revolution Mexico, the muralists were charged with visualizing a new national identity and representing progressive ideals. Their murals often incorporated elements of diverse indigenous cultures along with modern industrialization and social issues—creating sweeping narratives that demonstrated to a broad population the strength, progress, and possibility of a united Mexico. This movement, as it was manifested in many facets of life—from art to literature to clothing—is also sometimes referred to as Mexicanidad—translated as Mexicanness or Mexicanity.

A great example of Mexicanidad in our collection is a portfolio of ten lithographs purchased by the museum in 1956, Mexican Art: A Portfolio of Mexican People and Places, published by Taller de Grafica Popular and Associated American Artists. These prints are hanging just outside Frida Kahlo: Picturing an Icon and give a great sense of the history and people of Kahlo’s Mexico, while also showing how the bold, narrative style and social interests explored by the muralists were translated into prints that could be disseminated widely. We’ll share more information about them in a later post.

In the meantime, after your visit to Frida Kahlo: Picturing an Icon, take a walk through our permanent collection galleries, look for these works, and give some thought to the broader context of Kahlo’s life and work.