7 Howick Place, London SW1P 1BB
www.postboxgallery.com
It’s your Last Chance to see this small but intimate show of Frida Kahlo drawings. The setting mirrors the dimensions of the works on display: The Post box gallery is a tiny 10 meter square space on the first floor of a smart re-development in the same block as Philips de Pury. Its colossal neighbour is rather like the looming presence of Diego Rivera in the life of Kahol. This show brings together a series of private drawings, almost doodles on the back of envelopes and scraps of paper, correspondence to her doctor a Mr Farill.
As is well documented Frida Kahlo was the unfortunate victim of polio when young and then even unluckier to be involved in a horrific road accident, including a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, eleven fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, and a dislocated shoulder, an iron handrail pierced her abdomen and her vagina. The accident resulted in as many as thirty-five different operations and she was often bedridden and subject to severe pain.
The show was coincided with Frieze but gives the viewer a direct and singular encounter with the Real rather than commercial modernism: None of these works were ever intend for sale but were gifts to the Doctor or her psychologist. The drawings visualise the turbulent emotions, they convey what it means to be in pain and by extension question ones own morality. For this reason they are both beautiful and alarmingly direct… it’s a must see.
