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For Immediate Release • October 25, 2010
Staff Contact: Erik Mason, Longmont Museum, 303-651-8374
View the most recent Press Releases.
The Longmont Museum & Cultural Center is proud to present FRIDA KAHLO: Through the Lens of Nickolas Muray, From the collection of the Nickolas Muray Archives, running from November 13, 2010 to January 2, 2011
OCTOBER 25, 2010 - Photographer Nickolas Muray (1892-1965) came to America in 1913 from Hungary. In the 1920s, as his reputation grew, he photographed everybody who was anybody. At the end of his 45-year career as a New York photographer, most Americans had, at one time or another, seen Muray’s portraits of celebrities, presidents, and artists.
Between 1920 and 1940, Nickolas Muray made over 10,000 portraits. He began photographing Frida Kahlo in color in the winter of 1938-1939, while Kahlo sojurned in New York, attending her exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery, and he continued to do so until 1948. Muray photographed Frida more often than any other photographer.
Muray and Kahlo were at the height of an on-again, off-again 10-year love affair when he began photographing her using the Carbro technique, an early color photography method that produced brilliant color prints. Their affair had started in 1931, after Muray was divorced from his second wife and shortly after Kahlo’s marriage to Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. The love affair outlived Muray’s third marriage and Kahlo’s divorce and remarriage to Rivera by one year, ending in 1941. Muray wanted to marry Kahlo, but when it became apparent that she wanted Muray for a lover, not a husband, he took his leave for good and married his fourth and last wife. He and Kahlo remained good friends until her death in 1954.
After Kahlo received the first of Muray’s Carbro portraits in Mexico, she wrote to Muray on June 3, 1939: “Nick darling, I got my wonderful picture you send to me, I find it even more beautiful than in New York. Diego says that it is as marvelous as a Piero de la Francesca. To me it is more than that, it is a treasure, and besides, it will always remind me of that morning...[when] we went to your shop to take photos. This one was one of them. And now I have it near me. You will always be inside the magenta rebozo (on the left side).”
The showing here at the Longmont Museum is part of a national two-and-a-half year tour of 46 photographic prints reproduced from the original negatives. The tour was developed and is managed by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services, an exhibition tour development company in Kansas City, Missouri.
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Viva Frida!
Thursday, December 2
Join us for a special evening of Frida Kahlo.
6:00 pm “The Art of Frida Kahlo” A presentation on the artwork and life of the renowned Mexican artist with Tariana Navas-Nieves, Curator of Hispanic art, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.
7:00 pm Screening of the movie, Frida – the amazing life story of painter Frida Kahlo is explored in this acclaimed biopic. Rated R.
$8 resident, $10 non-residents
Reinvented Retablos: Art making class for the entire family
Sunday, December 12, 2 – 3:30 pm
Ages 5 and up (ages 5-7 require parental assistance)
Frida Kahlo was inspired by retablos – small portable homemade altars. Journey into the world of Frida as you work beside Julie Marino and Rita Flores de Wallace to learn the histories of the making of Mexican sceneries and how they influenced Frida. Make your own mixed media retablo to display in your home.
$8 resident, $10 non-resident, Pre-registration encouraged
Special Monday openings
November 22, December 20, December 27. The Museum will be open from 9 am to 5 pm on Mondays during school holidays.
GENERAL INFORMATION
The Longmont Museum & Cultural Center is located at 400 Quail Road in Longmont, Colorado. It is open 9 am to 5 pm, Tuesday through Saturday, 1 pm to 5 pm on Sunday, and closed most Mondays. Admission is free. For more information, contact the Museum at 303 651-8374, or visit their website, www.ci.longmont.co.us/museum.
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