Frida in America

I absolutely adored this book and so it goes without saying that if you are looking to familiarize yourself with Frida Kahlo, this is definitely the book to turn to. Celia Stahr goes into so many details, looking in depth at not only Celia's youth in Mexico, but her parents background and upbringing, as well as Diego's, and Diego's family. Stahr also describes and provides detailed analysis of all of Frida's major works and details of Rivera's murals before, and during their stay in America. It was extremely interesting reading about the differences between the art worlds of San Francisco,New York City and Detroit. All in all, I really enjoyed this book and like I said, I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about this tremendous artist, who only just in recent times is beginning to get the recognition she deserves. She was definitely a woman ahead of her times during her stay in America. Not even Diego Rivera, with his artist's temperament,was going to tell Frida what to do!

Thank you #netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read #fridainAmerica in return for my honest review.

Frida in America boils down the life of artist Frida Kahlo to a small chunk of time – 1930 to 1933 – and focuses on her life at the side of husband Diego Rivera, following him from New York to Detroit to San Francisco as he paints murals for rich industrialists, and she develops her own foothold as a surrealist.

Kahlo’s feelings about America had always been ambivalent; while she took American lovers and had American friends (and rich art patrons) she always saw it as a land of greed and prejudice and horrifying levels of class disparity; “gringoland”, filled with white faces, “unbaked rolls.”

The book pulls apart both the strained times in which Kahlo lived. She traversed America during the height of the Depression, saw unimaginable squalor and splendor, experienced racist prejudice and saw the way that the privilege and money her husband accrued sheltered her. She fell in lust with women and men but remained obsessed with Diego always, was friends with the maternal grandparents of the Lindbergh baby and store clerk girls.

Though it’s several grades below Hayden Herrera’s perfect Frida: The Biography of Frida Kahlo, which served as the basis for Salma Hayek’s Oscar-nominated 2002 biopic Frida, Frida in America still does a good job of crystallizing a specific point in time of Kahlo’s life and delivering the details in well-sketched scenes that contextualizes Kahlo’s experiences through those months and years.

The most fascinating fresh tidbits in the book center around Kahlo’s friendships – with other women, with the doctor who would attempt to assist her with the physical problems that plagued her after a bus accident that would define her life, with Georgia O’Keefe, to whom she was attracted but did not consummate that attraction.  While the juicier bits – like Kahlo’s bursts of temper, her miscarriage at Henry Ford Hospital, her tempestuous arguments with Rivera – have all already been milled over by many other biographers, Stahr’s ten years of research shows, and she keeps smartly to sources like Kahlo’s letters and the biographies of other artists to show who and what influenced Kahlo’s artistic growth.

And this book is about Kahlo’s art, her ideas, her techniques – in fact it’s one of the finest dives into such territory and it’s beautifully rendered.  Stahr does a perfect job carefully explaining how Kahlo navigated her life.

There is some psychological muddling that doesn’t really come off - dives into Kahlo’s psyche only occasionally come off under Stahr’s pen – but there are also moments of great triumph and good use of the material at hand.  Frida in America earns a solid recommendation.

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I loved learning more about Frida as a fan I loved reading about a time in her life I had not heard about.Reading about her friendship with women who played important roles in her life.Also reading more about her art was fascinating to me.A wonderful book for anyone who is interested or loves this complicated talrntrd woman.#netgalley#Fridain America

I loved this book. Learning more about Frida and her time spent in the United States filled me with such wonder. The most fascinating thing to me was to discover how much her time in New York during the Great Depression influenced both her opinion of America and her art. Seeing how she developed as an artist while in America and learning more about her past before she came to the states made this a wonderful read. She is a complicated and passionate woman and Celia Stahr makes this very clear in her marvelous book. I really enjoyed this book. #fridainamerica

This was a fascinating look at how three years spent in the United States transformed Frida Kahlo into the artist she would become.

It was no small task to be 23 years old and to leave her family and country. Yet, when one is married to Diego Rivera, one must make great leaps and that's exactly what Frida did. By taking this leap, Frida was able to experience everything from tremendous beauty to great poverty and racial tension, among other things, and it would be a sensory experience that would inspire her as an artist and challenge her after a personal tragedy

Although other, more sweeping biographies have been written about Frida Kahlo, this one was fascinating mainly because of its focused study on her three years in "Gringolandia" which fascinated her mainly because she realized she was a stranger in a strange land. It's a riveting snapshot that provides insight into why Kahlo would become the artist she became. Kahlo fans will appreciate this perspective, and they will enjoy Celia Stahr's loving appraisal of her time in the United States.

Rating: 4 illuminating stars

Let me first state that I am a big Frida Kahlo fan. I have read several biographies about her. I have even been to her ‘Blue House’ (family home) museum in the Coyoacan neighborhood of Mexico City. While in Mexico City, I also visited Museum of Modern art, which displays many of her paintings. I am not an art historian, but I do enjoy art, and art history.

This book helped deepen my appreciation for Frida Kahlo’s work, and her tumultuous life. Its primary focus is the three years that she and her new husband, the muralist, Diego Rivera spent in the United States. During that time, they visited San Francisco, Detroit, and New York. I appreciated the way that the author interwove Kahlo’s life events of that visit with artwork she created. It gave me a deeper understanding of the underlying meaning of some of Kahlo’s paintings.

Kahlo was a woman of many layers and moods. She strove to stretch herself personally and artistically. Celia Stahr’s book helped me better understand more of the layers that drove Kahlo to become the artist that the world knows today. This was an interesting and extensive biography of a short period in Frida Kahlo’s’ life. It included the people and events who shaped that life. I found it entertaining and educational.

‘Thank-You’ to NetGalley; the publisher, St. Martin’s Press; and the author, Celia Stahr, for providing a free e-ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a fantastic read!! Just the simple fact of reading about Frida is such an honor and privilege!!! I will never get enough!! Thank you for E-ARC!!

This is a substantial biography of one of most iconic 20th century artists and a genuine feminist icon. Celia, after all, is an author who knows her stuff, given that she is a Professor on modern American and contemporary art at the University of San Francisco.

Ostensibly, the book focuses on Frida’s visit to the United States where, across three years, she not only established herself as a figure of fascination for the media and those in artistic circles, but during which time she also emerged from the vast shadow cast by her on her own terms as an artist – but also this was a period where the marital strains between these two icons and egos became too much to bear.

“Frida and Diego’s relationship was also buckling, but it wasn’t due to a lack of money or creature comforts. The emotional constraints of living in a foreign country where all eyes were focused on Diego and where Frida had to minor her behaviour and words had taken a toll.”

However, this 450-page biography is so much more as, after all, what is studying Frida without focusing on her formative years and her artistic output as well as her personal life? And Celia does both justice with the first 100 pages dedicated to Frida’s childhood – the influence of her father, her traumatic accident, and her fascination with identity – before moving on to examine how the USA and her time there influenced both her work and her life.

There are some fantastic passages in here; I particularly loved learning more about the friendship between Frida and Georgia O’Keeffe, understanding what art Frida was drawn to – who and what influenced her – and how she found herself in conflict with the Western art world, which was so often racist, sycophantic and false.
“In San Francisco, Frida had posed for Imogen and Edward, looking regal, intelligent, engaged and beautiful, albeit with hints of the “noble savage” in the way she was portrayed by those artists.”

Frida was an undeniably complex woman and Celia captures much of that internal and external conflict here but I respected her reluctance to spend too much gossiping about Frida’s personal life, instead focusing on how any relationship impacted on her art (it’s worth noting that I read this book with a copy of Frida Kahlo: Masterpieces alongside as Celia goes into great detail on the composition of Frida’s works, explaining their messages and the context in which each painting was created and finished).

This is a book that puts Frida the artist front and centre – and it is a most welcome book for doing just that.

This monumental biography by art historian Celia Stahr is breathtaking. Extensively researched and academic in nature as a reference work, the book is also highly engaging and accessible to art lovers, in general, and especially to those who remain fascinated by the iconic character of Frida Kahlo. Stahr follows Frida's ever-evolving life and ties Kahlo's experiences, values, and beliefs into a study of her art, showing how they are completely connected. Stahr has spent a decade of her life creating this masterpiece: a superior study!

'Frida in America' by Celia Stahr is not a book only about the life Frida lived in America, but it also has insights about her life since her birth and to her death. I've read this book with great interest as it is the first biography I read of Frida Khalo. Learning about her childhood, about how she became such a great feminist influencer, and about her events in her personal life I did not know before was a great experience for me.
I would definitely buy a printed copy of this book and recommend it to anyone who is interested in Frida Khalo's life. Though the title suggests it is about her life in America, this book is much more than that.

***I received a free copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Frida is America by Celia Stahr is an intriguing look at the fascinating Frida Kahlo and her three years she spent in America.  The author does give the reader brief information about before and after the three year period but the bulk of the book is set during those three very important years in her artistic career.  Frida was only 23 when she came to America for the first time.  Diego had a commission in San Fransisco. 

The writing is very detailed when it came to describing the the paintings and Frida's clothing.  I stopped a number of times to look up a painting because I was fascinated by the descriptions.  The author is also very detailed about the symbolism that is present in Frida's art.  

This book is the culmination of 10 years of research by Celia Stahr.  She had access to numerous letters, journals, diaries, and newspaper articles.  It is very detailed in every aspect of the book.  I found the history in this book fascinating.  At times I did feel there was too much information on their friends but these friends were well known and influential people that had an impact on Frida and Diego's lives.  This was not a light read but I feel the author did an amazing job putting together such a detailed account of their three years in America.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. 
Biographies & Memoirs
Release Date: March 3, 2020

Frida in America by Celia Stahr is such a complex and detailed book predominantly about Frida Kahlo’s years in America and how they molded and influenced her artwork.

The book starts mostly narrating Kahlo’s early years and the defining moments that shaped her life to come. While her younger years were mostly tragic, they were also diverse and interesting. The different events and people in her life also lead to a highly dynamic mind, spiritual viewpoint, and thought process.

Kahlo had several interesting relationships. Many of these relationships, while with famous and influential people, were extremely unhealthy. Her family had an odd respect for her. They thought she was intelligent but unattractive. Her dad even believed she possessed a demon inside of her. Her very complex family life transfers us into her marriage to Diego.

Her marriage to Diego was all over the place. Their union was sad and so unhealthy. It was said that Kahlo always shared her special people with others.

There is so much detail about Frida’s art. Her art expressed her life’s story is such a unique way. Kahlo’s sexuality is a key component in this narrative and is explored in great depth. It was so influential in her artwork. The details that Stahr researched and included were fascinating. They gave me a fresh perspective on Kahlo’s artwork.

This book contains a secondary story and that is the history of the world along with the thoughts and beliefs of people at the time. The book crosses over a few majour cities and the different art and culture that were prominent at the time, in each area. There are several famous and historic people of interest who are touched on, as well. Like all of Kahlo’s other relationships, these relationships were just as unique and often tragic.

While I enjoyed this book, it was a little much for me. I love well researched books and I really appreciate the time and effort that Stahr put into her work. My favourire component was the historical aspect and the thoughts and culture of the time, followed by the details and symbolism that Kahlo incorporated into her artwork. While, Kahlo’s life is important and the main reason anyone would want to read this, for someone newer to her life there were a lot of details to sift through.

Frida in America is extremely well researched and very detailed account of a transformative time in Kahlo’s life. For anyone interested in her or her art this is the perfect book to start with.

I received an electronic Advanced Reader Copy from St. Martin’s Press through Net Galley. All opinions are 100% my own.

For a biography with this title, this books spends a lot of time delving into Frida's childhood and teen years, as well as with a couple of trips she took back to Mexico while largely living in the USA, but the subtitle of this volume is "The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist." That time she spent and the experiences she had, whether in the US or in Mexico, or traveling between the two, contributed immensely to the intriguing artist she became.

The bio starts out brightly with Frida and her husband, artist Diego Rivera, traveling to and arriving in San Francisco, but that all comes to a jarring halt as we travel back in time for a history of her life up to this point - which occupies fully a quarter of the narrative - before we get back to her life in the US. For me that wasn't so bad because I find the subject of this biography endlessly fascinating, but others might find themselves irritated when the title so boldly promises a US story and they get sent to Mexico for an extended period! Maybe such readers should learn to be less provincial?!

What did impress me was how well researched this is. I've read a variety of books about Frida Kahlo, but never one that was so delving and so revealing of her inner workings as this one is. It was impressive and truly engrossing for me. Regardless of what it meant before, her art takes on a whole new meaning once you're initiated into the symbolism she employed so often in her work. The story picks up back in the US with Diego's commission, his workaholic approach to his painting as well as his endless philandering and his absurd misgivings over his (at least initially) erroneous belief that his wife was as bad as he was. Far too many men project like that, and poor Frida has to deal with all of this largely by herself.

The book has a wealth of detail about their life both in Mexico and in the US, the people they met, the relationships they formed and the impact they had, as well as the experiences that moved them in return. They were very influential on each other too, each taking cues from the other's work, and expanding or amplifying them in their own art. In a way, their art was a way of talking to each other about topics they perhaps felt uncomfortable discussing face to face.

Frida's initial love-affair with the US was an uneasy one at best, and it quickly turned to disappointment and antagonism the longer she remained there. She missed her family and her homeland greatly which didn't help her state of mind, and her husband was very neglectful of her, focusing on the murals he had arrived in the US to paint, and working insane hours, leaving Frida very much to her own devices. She cultivated her own friends and relationships and worked on her art, showing increasing sophistication and steady improvement over her time in the USA. This books explains all of that and excavates, sometimes a bit too deeply for me!) the meaning, symbolism, and origins of her imagery.

If I have a complaint about this book, it's the same one I would have (and have had!) about any such book where art is discussed in detail, and that is the complete lack of any examples of her art, or any photographs of her which were taken during her travels. Fortunately, with the name 'Frida Kahlo' being so very well-known these days, it's possible to find on the Internet a lot of the pictures discussed in this biography, but it's a nuisance to have to halt reading and go searching for them.

Many images, in particular the photographs that are mentioned, I could not find, which was very frustrating. I don't know if the author's intention is to include the images in a print version and they were simply omitted from the review ebook. I wouldn't blame her for that, because Amazon's crappy Kindle format is renowned for mangling anything that's not plain vanilla text, but if the pictures could have been included in a PDF version of the book made available for review, that would have been truly awesome! It made it rather tedious at times to read a long and detailed description of the art or a photograph without being able to readily view it, or in some cases without being able to see it at all.

That aside, I really enjoyed this book and commend it as a worthy read. But then I'm heavily biased when it comes to Frida Kahlo. She probably the first person I'd visit if I ever managed to get my hands on a time machine! I commend this book as a worthy read for fans of art or of Kahlo.

An amazing insight into the life of Frida Khalo.
Frida in America is the type of book you read and walk away feeling inspired. This wonderful artist has always appealed to me. Her determination, her struggles, her achievements; they made her an inspirational woman.
I feel privileged to be able to read this book before publication and thank the author for her amazing skills in telling the life of Frida and her husband Diego

In 2015, I saw the Detroit Institute of Art (DAI) exhibition Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit. I knew Diego Rivera from the DIA court murals but I had known little about Frida Kahol. Reading Frida Kahol in America by Celia Stahr, specifically about Kahlo's time in Detroit, I could clearly remember her painting of her miscarriage in Henry Ford Hospital. We listened to the story on headphones and studied the unforgettable painting.

Although the exhibit included works by Rivera, it was Kahlo's that stuck in my mind. Rivera's Flower Seller was more accessible, 'prettier', but Kahlo's self-portraits grabbed my attention--those eyes, so direct and almost challenging, the self-confidence and self-acceptance revealed.

Stahr shares that many who knew both Rivera and Kahlo said Kahlo was the better artist. She stood in the shadow of her husband's charismatic personality, diminished by the press, struggling to develop her artistic voice.

Kahlo was in her early twenties when she married the older, famous artist, and only twenty-three when they arrived in America. Her life had already been eventful, suffering polio, scoliosis, spina bifida, and a life-threatening bus accident when she was a teenager. Pain accompanied her every day. She was a Communist, she challenged society's prescribed sex roles, and had suffered heartbreak as a spurned lover.

It was so interesting to see American during the Depression through Kahlo's eyes. The wealthy industrialists were her husband's patrons--they paid the bills. They also represented a privileged class Kahlo found revolting.

Kahlo wrote to her mother, "Witnessing the horrible poverty here and the millions of people who have no work, food, or home, who are cold and have no hope in this country of scumbag millionaires, who greedily grab everything, has profoundly shocked [us]."

Of course, I was very interested in the artists' time in Detroit. The city had been one of the hardest hit by the Depression with 50% unemployment. I was shocked to read about the Ford Hunger March. Ford had reduced salaries and laid off workers, and since the workers lived in Ford housing they became homeless as well. Four thousand marched in freezing weather to the gate of the Rouge River plant to be met by bullets and fire hoses, killing four people. River and Kahlo arrived a month after the event.

Stahr addresses each painting created by Kahlo, explaining the work and its symbolism in detail, including the self-portrait made for her estranged lover, the groundbreaking paintings about her abortion and the miscarriage that spurred a traumatic 'rebirth' as had her bus accident had when she was eighteen years old.

Stahr addresses the duality "at the root of Frida's sense of self," part of her "search for a unification of opposites, as the Aztecs and alchemists espoused."

Kahlo's deeply personal art defied convention, delving into female experiences never before depicted in art. In comparison, Rivera's masterpiece murals at the Detroit Institute of Art look to the past, glorifying the pre-Depression industrial worker and the scientists and entrepreneurs who created industry.

American industrialist millionaires were also aiding Hitler--Ford a known anti-semite, and oil companies supplying fuel and poisonous gasses to the Nazis.

After Detroit, the couple went to New York City where Rivera was to create a mural for the new Rockefeller Center; a battle over a patron's control of an artist's content played itself out and resulted in the mural being boarded up.

It could have happened in Detroit, but the scandalous murals drew record crowds to the DIA and turned around their finances.

"Love is the basis of all life," Stahr quotes Kahlo. Love of country, for friends and family, sexual love, for home. Her relationship with Rivera was conflicted, their love affairs rending their marriage, resulting in divorce and remarriage.

This is a revealing and deep study of Kahlo that truly educated me while engaging me emotionally with its subject.

I was given a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

If you are an art history major, this is your book. The life of Frida Kahlo, and, secondarily, her famous painter husband, Diego Rivera, is told in this extremely well researched book. Frida’s artistic life and her marriage to Diego were inarguably influenced by living three years in the United States.

The stories of their travels to San Francisco, New York City and Detroit are interesting. Who Frida and Diego meet and spend time with is important to their overall history. Where the author looses me is in her exhaustive pages -long details on every painting she describes. The minutiae of every detail, such as the placement of a hand to the position of a head and what that means, is mind boggling.

The story, put together largely from diaries and journals, is not a very flattering portrait of Frida nor Diego-their lives were complicated-and you can’t have one without the other.They are immature and temperamental philanderers who despise America, yet are happy to live well and accept money from the wealthy they abhor. Other eye opening facts in the story include those of the Henry Ford and John Rockefeller families.

While Frida was fragile in most of her relationships, she was also an avid feminist. For that she received criticism and little notice of her true artistic prowess until later in life. All in all this is not a very feel good tell-all of Frida and Diego, but it’s one you’ll not easily forget.

Really enjoyed this historical look at a brief window of the life and career of Frida Kahlo. Lots of primary sources cited and some fascinating speculative analysis about her use of symbolism in various areas of her art and life. It was particularly cool to read this right before attending the Frida/Diego exhibit at the NC Museum of Art, showcasing the paintings of both Kahlo and Rivera, and also including works of their contemporaries and personal photographic portraits of one or both artists.

I was given a copy of this book by #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Frida in America

Celia Stahr has presented us with a full and well-researched account of Frida Kahlo’s life and loves, troubles and tragedies, brilliance and bloom. Frida seems to have emerged and re-emerged out of her life experience on a daily basis, catepillar to butterfly, by infinity loops.

Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist helped me understand better this woman whose work disturbed me. Having grown up with a mother who painted, my sibs and me were constantly plunked down in front of art and told to report back on what we saw, how we felt and what meaning did we think the artist was trying to express. Mostly toddlers and grade-schoolers, we answered as you would think, monosyllabically – but she was a pusher, was our mom. Once she plunked us down in front of Frida’s work. I loved the colors, bright, saturated and rule-breaking. I didn’t like the people. No smiles, and they looked mad. As years went by, I added her to my not favorite lists.

After I had kids and grew up a little, I ran across Frida's paintings, and her story. I’d fallen in love with Salvadore Dali and found her name mixed with his – I started a leisurely life stroll for more information about Frida. This book answers so many questions! Questions about why she did what she did, and who she did what she did. The book is true to title and focuses on key events in Frida's time spent in America. She grows eyes to see and ears to hear the difference between cultures, people, politics filtered through national aim and direction. What she gathers in her heart she spills out onto every canvas. There is no silence in her work. Frida's hunger, thirst, rage and hope all find their way into the hearts of those who stand and embrace her work. This book is a fine accompaniment to that appreciation – it is a text, albeit with a timeline and narrative that compels page turning with the same drive as a thriller or mystery. The concluding end materials are very satisfying. When you don’t want to be truly done, there is plenty to play with there.

5 stars for this work that Frida herself must be pleased with – finally, someone has loved her just as she is and gets it.

A sincere thanks to Celia Stahr, St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing me an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Frida in America by Celia Stahr is a stunning biography into the fascinating and short life of the talented Frida (Frieda) Kahlo. This book focusses on the two years (1930/1932) that Frida and Diego Rivera visited, lived, and traveled throughout America.

Ms Stahr was gracious enough to also give the reader plenty of insight into events that occurred in not only Frida’s life growing up and her earlier years before Rivera, but also the backgrounds of both her parents and many of her friends.

I have been a passionate fan of Kahlo’s for over 20 years, and there were still things that I was able to read about that I did not know. It was amazing to be able to read in depth concerning all of her inspirations and influences, as well as a deep search into the meanings of her pictures, paintings, and her fashion. She was a true genius that was not truly appreciated while she was alive.

This jam-packed biography was just what I needed to add another angle into one of my most beloved artists.

Frida was intelligent, open, passionate, imperfect, beautiful, and sometimes tortured soul that was and emotional yet reserved. She was an amazing woman and artist who was trying to find herself and her place within her family and loved ones and the society that was at the very least judgmental, overbearing, and limited for women at that time.

The author gave us a glimpse into that soul and her meticulously researched book definitely did Frida justice. I am impressed.

5/5 stars

Thank you NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for this stunning ARC and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion.

I am posting this review to my GR and Bookbub accounts immediately and will post it to my Amazon and B&N accounts upon publication.