Hayden Herrera

The beautifully illustrated and authoritative biography of Frida Kahlo'Frida will hold its place as the first comprehensive biography of this most visceral of artists' Observer'Mesmerizing' TimeFrida is the story of one of the twentieth century’s most extraordinary women, the painter Frida Kahlo. Born near Mexico City, she grew up during the turbulent days of the Mexican Revolution and, at eighteen, was the victim of an accident that left her crippled and unable to bear children. To salvage what she could from her unhappy situation, Kahlo had to learn to keep still – so she began to paint. Kahlo’s unique talent was to make her one of the century’s most enduring artists. But her remarkable paintings were only one element of a rich and dramatic life. Frida is also the story of her tempestuous marriage to the muralist Diego Rivera, her love affairs with numerous, diverse men such as Isamu Noguchi and Leon Trotsky, her involvement with the Communist Party, her absorption in Mexican folklore and culture, and of the inspiration behind her unforgettable art.

A New Yorker Best Book of 2021 A "touching, heartbreaking, and exceptional" (Town & Country) coming-of-age memoir by the daughter of artistic, bohemian parents--set against a backdrop of 1950s New York, Cape Cod, and Mexico. Hayden Herrera's parents each married five times; following their desires was more important to them than looking after their children. When Herrera was only three years old, her parents separated, and she and her sister moved from Cape Cod to New York City to live with their mother and their new hard-drinking stepfather. They saw their father only during the summers on the Cape, when they and the other neighborhood children would be left to their own devices by parents who were busy painting, writing, or composing music. These adults inhabited a world that Herrera's mother called "upper bohemia," a milieu of people born to privilege who chose to focus on the life of the mind. Her parents' friends included such literary and artistic heavyweights as artist Max Ernst, writers Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy, architect Marcel Breuer, and collector Peggy Guggenheim. On the surface, Herrera's childhood was idyllic and surreal. But underneath, the pain of being a parent's afterthought was acute. Upper Bohemia captures the tension between a child's excitement at every new thing and her sadness at losing the comfort of a reliable family. For her parents, both painters, the thing that mattered most was beauty--and so her childhood was expanded by art and by a reverence for nature. But her early years were also marred by abuse and by absent, irresponsible adults. As a result, Herrera would move from place to place, parent to parent, relative to family friend, and school to school--eventually following her mother to Mexico. The stepparents and stepsiblings kept changing too. Intimate and honest, Upper Bohemia "captures an enchanted but erratic childhood in a rarefied milieu with the critical but appreciative eye of a seasoned art historian" (The Wall Street Journal). It is a celebration of a wild and pleasure-filled way of living--and a poignant reminder of the toll such narcissism takes on the children raised in its grip.

A New Yorker Best Book of 2021 A "touching, heartbreaking, and exceptional" (Town & Country) coming-of-age memoir by the daughter of artistic, bohemian parents--set against a backdrop of 1950s New York, Cape Cod, and Mexico. Hayden Herrera's parents each married five times; following their desires was more important to them than looking after their children. When Herrera was only three years old, her parents separated, and she and her sister moved from Cape Cod to New York City to live with their mother and their new hard-drinking stepfather. They saw their father only during the summers on the Cape, when they and the other neighborhood children would be left to their own devices by parents who were busy painting, writing, or composing music. These adults inhabited a world that Herrera's mother called "upper bohemia," a milieu of people born to privilege who chose to focus on the life of the mind. Her parents' friends included such literary and artistic heavyweights as artist Max Ernst, writers Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy, architect Marcel Breuer, and collector Peggy Guggenheim. On the surface, Herrera's childhood was idyllic and surreal. But underneath, the pain of being a parent's afterthought was acute. Upper Bohemia captures the tension between a child's excitement at every new thing and her sadness at losing the comfort of a reliable family. For her parents, both painters, the thing that mattered most was beauty--and so her childhood was expanded by art and by a reverence for nature. But her early years were also marred by abuse and by absent, irresponsible adults. As a result, Herrera would move from place to place, parent to parent, relative to family friend, and school to school--eventually following her mother to Mexico. The stepparents and stepsiblings kept changing too. Intimate and honest, Upper Bohemia "captures an enchanted but erratic childhood in a rarefied milieu with the critical but appreciative eye of a seasoned art historian" (The Wall Street Journal). It is a celebration of a wild and pleasure-filled way of living--and a poignant reminder of the toll such narcissism takes on the children raised in its grip.

I denna magnifika bok går konstvetaren Hayden Herrera på djupet i den fascinerande och sprakande historien om Frida Kahlo, en av världens mest ikoniska konstnärer och människor: Hennes barndom i Mexico City under den mexikanska revolutionen. Hennes fascination för mexikansk folklore och kultur. Samröret med kommunisterna. Det stormiga äktenskapet med konstnären Diego Rivera. Hennes många kärleksaffärer, och den tragiska olycka som skadade henne för livet och gjorde så att hon aldrig kunde få barn. Frida Kahlo är rikt illustrerad med foton och målningar - en påkostad, fängslande biografi, oumbärlig för alla som är intresserade av Frida Kahlo. HAYDEN HERRERA är en amerikansk konsthistoriker och författare. Hon har skrivit biografier om Henri Matisse och Mary Frank och hennes texter har publicerats i bland annat New York Times och Art in America. 1996 mottog hon det prestigefyllda Guggenheim Fellowship-priset.»En förtrollande berättelse om radikal konst, romantisk politik, bisarra kärlekar och fysiskt lidande.« | Time Magazine »Hayden Herrera lyckas på ett imponerande sätt skära sig igenom myterna och ge oss en bild av denna sagolika kvinna.« | The Independent»Den första omfattande biografin över den mest fysiska av konstnärer.« | The Observer »Genom sin konst gjorde sig Kahlo till både konstnär och ikon. Med denna efterlängtade biografi har hon också, till sist, gjorts fullt mänsklig.« | San Francisco Chronicle »En oförglömlig, intensivt levande biografi.« | Ms. Magazine

La mejor biografía que se ha escrito sobre Frida Kahlo, la pintora mexicana por excelencia. Edición revisada con prólogo de Valeria Luiselli. Frida fue una figura mítica creada por sí misma, el centro exótico de una esfera que incluía a amigos como León Trotski y Nelson Rockefeller, Isamu Noguchi y André Breton, Dolores del Río y Paulette Goddard. Fue esposa del gran muralista Diego Rivera y artista brillante por derecho propio. Esta edición ampliamente revisada de la biografía de la pintora mexicana por excelencia nos revela a una mujer con un magnetismo y una originalidad legendarios, cuya vida fue tan dramática y obsesiva como las imágenes que pintaba. La sensualidad de sus cuadros, el ambiente extraño y denso que los impregna, surgieron directamente de sus propias experiencias: su infancia durante la Revolución, el devastador accidente sufrido a los dieciocho años, su vínculo con el Partido Comunista a través de Diego Rivera, su pasión por el folclore y la cultura de México... Frida realizó una fascinante obra autobiográfica plasmada en la pintura: una irresistible serie de autorretratos que representaban el desarrollo de su urgente necesidad de conocerse a sí misma, creados entre 1926 y 1954, fecha en que murió. Quienes la conocieron relatan la historia de su vida como una novela llena de encanto y joie de vivre, hasta el trágico final. Pese a que la verdad es más desoladora, la historia de Frida Kahlo sigue siendo tan extraordinaria como la leyenda que creó. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION Revised Edition. Prologue by Valeria Luiselli. Born near Mexico City, she grew up during the turbulent days of the Mexican Revolution and, at eighteen, was the victim of an accident that left her crippled and unable to bear children. To salvage what she could from her unhappy situation, Kahlo had to learn to keep still - so she began to paint. Kahlo's unique talent was to make her one of the century's most enduring artists. But her remarkable paintings were only one element of a rich and dramatic life. Frida is also the story of her tempestuous marriage to the muralist Diego Rivera, her love affairs with numerous, diverse men such as Isamu Noguchi and Leon Trotsky, her involvement with the Communist Party, her absorption in Mexican folklore and culture, and of the inspiration behind her unforgettable art.

A master of what he called "the sculpturing of space," Isamu Noguchi was a vital figure for modern public art. Born to an American mother and a Japanese father, Noguchi never felt like he belonged anywhere and spent his life assembling identities in his statues, monuments, and gardens. He traveled incessantly from New York to remote Japanese islands, from Paris to Bangladesh, synthesizing aesthetic values. The result--massive sculptures of interlocking wood, Zen-like gardens of granite, and stone slides--is now seen as a powerful artistic link between East and West. Drawing on Noguchi's personal correspondence and interviews with artists, patrons, assistants, and lovers, Hayden Herrera creates another compulsively readable biography of one of the twentieth century's most important artists. Noguchi was elusive, forever uprooting himself to reinvigorate what he called the "keen edge of originality." Yet Herrera locates this man in his friendships with artists like Buckminster Fuller and Arshile Gorky, and in his affairs with women like Frida Kahlo. Herrera reveals his playfulness and his intense immersion in his work, from designing sets for Martha Graham to creating the Noguchi Museum in Queens. A rich meditation on art in a globalized milieu, Listening to Stone is a moving portrait of an artist compulsively driven to reinvent himself as he searched for his own "essence of sculpture."

Das Leben der deutsch-mexikanischen Malerin Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), das über viele Jahre an der Grenze zum Tod verlief, ist so unvergleichlich wie die Bilder, die sie gemalt hat. Als diese Frau auf scheinbar alles verzichten musste, schuf sie sich malend eine eigene Welt. Ihre Bilder, phantastische Metaphern für Liebe und Tod, treffen den Betrachter mit unausweichlicher Wut und schlugen auch die großen Künstler ihrer Generation in Bann. Die großes Liebe ihres Lebens war Diego Rivera, der bedeutendste Muralist Mexikos. Ihre Liebe floss in die Kunst beider ein und ließ eine Malerei von leidenschaftlicher Schönheit entstehen, die nicht aufhört, immer neue Generationen zu begeistern. Hayden Herrera, eine der besten Kennerinnen von Leben und Werk Frida Kahlos zeichnet den Lebensweg dieser bewundernswerten Frau nach: einfühlsam und detailgetrau, mit einem Gespür für Größe und Tragik.

The author of Frida chronicles the heroic and poignant tale of the great painter who seemed beset by one personal tragedy after another, from his family's escape from the Armenian massacre of 1915 to his 1948 suicide. Reprint.

An in-depth biography of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo details her haunting and original painting style, her turbulent marriage to muralist Diego Rivera, her association with communism, and her love of Mexican culture and folklore. Reprint. (A Miramax film, directed by Julie Taymor, releasing Spring 2002, starring Salma Hayek & Alfred Molina) (Biography)

" Herrera's] expressive and fluid prose is able to keep pace with Kahlo's riveting canvases and adds to the experience of viewing them. . . . A superb tribute." -- BooklistIn small, stunningly rendered self-portraits, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo painted herself cracked open, hemorrhaging during a miscarriage, anesthetized on a hospital gurney, and weeping beside her own extracted heart. Her works are so incendiary in emotion and subject matter that one art critic suggested the walls of an exhibition be covered with asbestos.In this beautiful book, art historian Hayden Herrera brings together numerous paintings and sketches by Kahlo, documenting each with explanatory text that probes the influences in Kahlo's life and their meaning for her work.Included among the illustrations are more than eighty full color paintings, as well as dozens of black and white pictures and line illustrations. Among the famous and little-known works included in Frida Kahlo: The Paintings are The Two Fridas, Self Portrait as a Tehuana, Without Hope, The Dream, The Little Deer, Diego and I, Henry Ford Hospital, My Birth, and My Nurse and I. Here, too, are documentary photographs of Frida Kahlo and her world that help to illuminate the various stages of her life.