Celebrating Hispanic Artists: Frida Khalo and Patrociño Barela

As we continue to observe Hispanic Heritage Month, Museum Attendant, Doug Daye takes a close look at Latino artists Frida Khalo and Patrociño Barela!

By Doug Daye

Get an intimate look at two inspirational Hispanic artists, Frida Khalo and Patrociño Barela. Though their work was phenomenal, both artists had to face much adversity and sadness over the course of their lives. Examining the difficulties they had to face truly deepens the love and respect for the legacy they left behind for all to enjoy.

Frida Kahlo

From fridakhalo.org

Frida Kahlo was born on July 9, 1907, in Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico. Her father, Wilhem, was a German photographer who immigrated to Mexico and married Matilde Calderón y González, a mestiza woman. During her childhood, Kahlo contracted polio which caused her to be bedridden for nine months. The disease damaged her right and left foot which made her walk with a limp after she recovered. She went on to study at the National Preparatory School in 1922 where she became very popular with her fellow students and politically active by joining the Young Communist League and the Mexican Communist Party. In 1925, Kahlo, along with her boyfriend at the time, Alejondro Gomez Arias, became involved in a tragic bus accident that caused damage to her spine and pelvis. After returning home from the Red Cross Hospital to recuperate further, Kahlo completed her first self-portrait and gave it to Arias. In 1929, Kahlo married well-known muralist Diego Rivera. Following Rivera’s career, they lived in multiple places including San Francisco, New York, and Detroit. Their relationship was very strained and tainted by infidelity. Khalo suffered much heartbreak in her marriage to Rivera including a miscarriage in 1934. They divorced in 1939 but then remarried a year later.

Khalo painting while convalescing following the bus accident in 1925. From mcall.com.

Frida Khalo’s life was filled with challenges that were both physical and emotional that she displayed in much of her artwork. She kept a diary of her drawings and her inner thoughts up until her death in 1954. The Dolores Olmedo Museum in Xochimilco, Mexico City, displays the intimate, colorful pages of her diary on their online exhibit!

Frida Khalo’s diary can be viewed on the Google Arts and Culture website here: https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/a-peek-at-frida-kahlo-s-diary/sAKymDksayhmJA

Also, take a look at photographs from her life and her famous artwork at the Frida Kahlo Museum’s online exhibit “Frida Kahlo: Vida la Vida” here: https://artsandculture.google.com/story/SwUxhkzUTlOgbw

Patrociño Barela

Patrociño Barela from americanart.si.edu

Patrociño Barela was born in Bisbee, Arizona in 1908. He left home at a young age after his mother died, to search for work. He found work as a laborer in Denver, Colorado and became married to a widow with three children, before moving to New Mexico in 1930. He began crafting his own wood sculptures after being commissioned to reconstruct a wooden devotional carving, known colloquially in New Mexico as a bulto, and also commonly known as santo. For over 30 years he worked carving figures of men and women, to symbolize family dynamics, as well as many religious figures, eventually becoming one of the foremost santeros, or carvers of wooden saints. Barela’s art gained notoriety after Russell Vernon Hunter, director of the Works Progress Administration took notice and included his work in the Public Works of Art Project in 1935. Though his work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and he was praised as the “most dramatic discovery” to come out of the exhibition, he was uninterested in fame and money. He unfortunately died in a fire in his woodshed in 1964. Barela is noted as being the first Mexican-American to receive national recognition for his work and his talent has been greatly admired by other artists, especially his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Barela with his son in New Mexico, 1936. From Wikimedia Commons Archives of American Art.

The National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico has an online exhibit dedicated to Patrociño Barela. The exhibit gives details about his sensational artwork including “Untitled: Portrait of a Black Man” which he dedicated to a black family that helped him in his time of need.

The online collection can be viewed here: https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/patrocinio-barela-works-of-art/ZAKyxP8WSvFsLA

Learn more about Patrociño Barela here: https://www.collectorsguide.com/fa/fa046.shtml