“I hate you.”

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These were Frida Kahlo's first words to Lucienne Bloch. The two met during a party that New York's MOMA had organized for the opening of the major 1931 Diego Rivera retrospective.

 

Rivera at that time is a great Mexican muralist, Frida his young wife at the time a still little-known artist, Lucienne an equally young artist who was trying her hand at a variety of techniques.
 

Lucienne and Rivera at that party had been side by side all evening, had talked mostly about the fresco technique, which Lucienne had studied on her trip to Italy but also in the art schools she had attended.
The attunement was obvious, but what Frida did not yet know that night was that Lucienne, unlike the other women who gravitated around that cumbersome husband, would become one of her most loyal and trusted friends, the one who would stand by her when she miscarried, when she lost her mother, when she discovered Diego's betrayal with her sister Cristina, and even when she achieved success with her first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York.
 

Soon after that first New York meeting, Lucienne Bloch became Diego Rivera's assistant: she shared his political and aesthetic ideals. Both were in search of “an art for the people,” one that was understandable and usable by all.
 

Love, politics and art. Lucienne's original photos displayed in this unique exhibition tell the true essence of Frida Kahlo, the one that only such an intimate relationship could bring out candidly and spontaneously.
 

This exhibition recounts not only the friendship between two women, two artists, free from any kind of social bridle, strong and determined, but also the historical period in which they lived, the social context, and in a broader sense the entire life of Frida Kahlo, in an all-encompassing look at one of the most beloved historical figures of all time, an icon of feminism, a symbol of independence and vitality, whose legacy, 70 years after her death, still inspires modern generations.

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The exhibition is presented in Italian and English.

Audioguide in Italian and English included in the price, downloadable on site.​​​