Diego and Frida show reveals their politics and patrons

A rare exhibition of art by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera tells the intriguing story of their volatile relationship, and for those who look closer, there are other tales too.

Frida & Diego: Love & Revolution, which opened at the Art Gallery of South Australia on Saturday, also paints a picture of their patrons Jacques and Natasha Gelman.

While the artists had a notoriously tempestuous relationship (both had numerous affairs) the Gelmans, by contrast, could apparently agree on each artwork they acquired for their substantial and valuable collection.

That collection, one of the few ways the public can view Kahlo and Rivera’s work in the flesh, has been travelling the world in various exhibitions for the past 23 years.

The Adelaide show is its final stop.

Jacques Gelman was a successful director and movie producer, and the couple were entrepreneurs who led an incredible life, according to collection curator Magda Carranza de Akle.

Yet the avant-garde Mexican artists Kahlo and Rivera who became their close friends, were members of the Communist Party.

“They were friends because the Gelmans admired their work, not their politics, not their personal life,” she said.

The Gelmans – Jacques was originally from Russia, Natasha from Czechoslovakia – met in Mexico City and married there in 1941, later becoming Mexican citizens.

Their relationship with the two artists began in 1943, with Jaques Gelman commissioning first Rivera and then Kahlo to paint a portrait of his wife.

Kahlo’s portrait of Natasha is small, intimate and sober, showing her unsmiling in jewels and pearls – even the framing is an exquisite part of the picture.

Rivera’s large scale effort has her reclining on a couch in a glamorous white dress and jewels, surrounded by lilies, like a film star. But could her legs really have been so impossibly long?

The couple became supporters of the artists as well as other Mexican Modernists, and purchased what would become one of Kahlo’s most famous works, Diego on My Mind, that same year.

“To this day I adore that painting and the other Fridas, as much as the day I first saw them,” Natasha Gelman later recalled.

She hung the Kahlos in the bedroom of the last home the couple lived in.

Which is saying something, considering the couple also owned pieces by Braque, Gris, Leger, Picasso, Dali, Matisse, and Miro, since donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The show provides an insight into the Gelman’s connoisseurship, according to AGSA curator Tansy Curtin – and they had very good taste.

As for Kahlo and Rivera, it’s superficial to focus on their volatile personal lives above their art, she said.

“We as human beings love to try and unpack it… we love those kinds of salacious details.”

“They were obviously an incredibly intellectual couple, and I don’t think we can necessarily understand their relationship.”

One fascinating part of the show is a home video Curtin tracked down of Kahlo and Rivera, in which the affection between the two artists is obvious.

Frida & Diego: Love & Revolution is open at the Art Gallery of South Australia from Saturday.

AAP travelled to Adelaide with the assistance of AGSA.