Notes From Your BooksellerFrom 1930-1933, Frida Kahlo lived in America. It was her first time away from her homeland Mexico as she and her much-older husband, Diego Rivera, lived in San Francisco, Detroit and New York. The many contradictions of America as "the land of the free" and a country of great wealth was not always seen by Frida and Diego. Their marriage was also being strained for various reasons as Frida grew more miserable and wanted nothing more than to return to Mexico. It was an eventful three years, nicely captured in this book in detail rarely found elsewhere.
The riveting story of how three years spent in the United States transformed Frida Kahlo into the artist we know today
"[An] insightful debut....Featuring meticulous research and elegant turns of phrase, Stahr’s engrossing account provides scholarly though accessible analysis for both feminists and art lovers." —Publisher's Weekly
Mexican artist Frida Kahlo adored adventure. In November, 1930, she was thrilled to realize her dream of traveling to the United States to live in San Francisco, Detroit, and New York. Still, leaving her family and her country for the first time was monumental.
Only twenty-three and newly married to the already world-famous forty-three-year-old Diego Rivera, she was at a crossroads in her life and this new place, one filled with magnificent beauty, horrific poverty, racial tension, anti-Semitism, ethnic diversity, bland Midwestern food, and a thriving music scene, pushed Frida in unexpected directions. Shifts in her style of painting began to appear, cracks in her marriage widened, and tragedy struck, twice while she was living in Detroit.
Frida in America is the first in-depth biography of these formative years spent in Gringolandia, a place Frida couldn’t always understand. But it’s precisely her feelings of being a stranger in a strange land that fueled her creative passions and an even stronger sense of Mexican identity. With vivid detail, Frida in America recreates the pivotal journey that made Senora Rivera the world famous Frida Kahlo.