Diego Rivera’s Anahuacalli Museum

One Reason to love Mexico City:
Diego Rivera’s Anahuacalli Museum in Coyoacan.
Over his lifetime, Diego Rivera collected 50,000 pieces of pre-hispanic art. According to the museum staff he bought from ‘archaeologists’ who robbed temple sites and had a hand in taking pieces himself.

In return, he built this volcanic rock house which mimics a pyramid inside, to give the historic art collection a home and share them with the Mexican people.
The house took 28 years to build and was unfinished upon his death.  With the generous support of Dolores Olmeda, the house was finished and opened to the public.  I have to say it is an amazing piece of architecture that they say was built with some consultation from Frank Lloyd Wright.

Inside, you are walking inside a pyramid laden with stone mosaics of prehispanic images on both the floor and ceilings, the walls made of volcanic rock from the land the house sits on.  The top floor is home to some of his large mural sketches and houses contemporary shows. It’s beautiful and a must see if you are in Mexico city.

View the slideshow below:

© Suzanne da Rosa 2012

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Casa Azul, Frida’s House

The Frida Kahlo Museum and the house that she grew up in, the house she was nursed back to health in after her tragic accident, the house she learned to paint in. This was her family home, which after one of her break ups with Diego Rivera, she moved back to. She painted it blue. She and Diego later brought the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and his wife here to live. She spent her last days and died here. (slideshow at the bottom of this post)

The grounds outside the room where Frida's day bed was.

I was truly stunned by the size of the grounds, as well as the design of the structures which skirted the outer perimeter near the street, different than I had imagined.  I was equally surprised at how many preconceived ideas about Frida Kahlo’s life I had adopted which this visit  dispelled by just being in the presence of the real thing.  This always happens to me with art galleries anyway.  For example Goya’s dark series, which are housed at the Prado in Madrid, you can’t imagine what these paintings really are through photographs of them.  You think you can, but when you stand right in front of them, they convey emotion, compassion, anger and the power of their story and they become real.  You have to spend time with the emotion they create inside you afterwards.

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