Frida & Diego: Art, Love, Life

The Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera are remembered for their provocative and controversial paintings, as well as their deep and passionate love for each other. They were rebellious, disregarding the traditional and normal, and enjoyed the politically unstable. Their marriage was one of the most turbulent and infamous in history, filled with passion, betrayal, revolution, and hardship. Above all, their art helped define their time.

Book Reviews
Teen Reads: "Any piece of biographical work deserves a plethora of applause, since it takes an intense amount of work to produce a piece on the entire existence of a human life. But when two people are the biographical specimens, one can only imagine the countless hours spent leafing through books, studies and museum inventories. FRIDA & DIEGO: Art, Love, Life is a precise view into the minds and lives of two of Mexico’s most famed artists.

Catherine Reef’s book reminds me of a one of the murals Diego Rivera might have constructed. It was part art history, part world history, part politics and part biography. Reef binds these two controversial figures together with enough ease to convince readers that Frida and Diego were indeed one specimen. The story of the two artists is a fascinating study into the human psyche and how it reacts when pushed to its limits in life and love. Reef illustrates the intensity of the love that the two shaped and it how it influenced their lives." -Catherine Reef

http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/frida-and-diego-art-love-life

Personal Review: "As someone who didn't know much about Frida Kahlo nor Diego Rivera, this book was the most beautiful and well written guide. Not only was this a biography about two of the most influential artists in Mexican history, it told their story. We get to see inside each artists' minds, how they thought, what their emotions were like, what drove them to paint and do what they did. It is one thing to study the artwork to try and understand the artist, but this biography gives us an even deeper understanding of how these two artists were. How the world that was crumbling around them affected both their art and their personal. Not dissimilar to a play that could have been written by Shakespeare, or a telanovela drama, the story of these lovers is so intricately depicted through the images in the book. Reef soaks her writing with the culture and traditions, geography, history, and psychology of the times and the artists. A biography like never told, this is a book that is more than a regurgitation of facts and numbres. It is a beautifully and eloquently written story of two people who fell in love amidst a tumultuous world."

Activities
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera were both artists. So why not you too? With this activity, get to know more about Mexican art and create your own masterpiece.

http://mom.me/latina-mom/13259-free-frida-kahlo-printable-coloring-activity/

Other Links
NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/books/viva-frida-and-frida-diego.html

Book Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX6L4cQCIdk