Pre-Columbian Mayan and Inca carved heads as well as a highly contemporary rendering of Frida Kahlo as a living human heart are among the arresting faces to be found in “Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits,” a new exhibition just opened this month at New York’s El Museo del Barrio.
The 115 paintings and sculptures in this show were drawn from all over the world and represent the history of portraiture throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
An eye-catching highlight of the exhibition is a 1946 seated portrait of a sexily dressed Elisa Saldivar by Kahlo’s philandering husband, Diego Rivera.
There are Kahlo works here as well, along with those by Colombia’s Fernando Botero, Puerto Rico’s Jose Compeche, and Mexico’s David Alfaro Siquerios and Rufino Tamayo.
Most of the pieces have never been exhibited in the U.S. before.
The show closes March 20 at the Museo del Barrio, 5th Avenue at 104th Street; 212-831-7272; www.elmuseo.org.
A jewel of a show
Florida’s Orlando Museum of Art has just opened a 70-piece jewelry show–“Treasured Jewelry From the Collections of Dr. and Mrs. Solomon D. Klotz and Norma Canelas and William D. Roth”–that contains New York masterworks as well as jewelry from the American Southwest, South and Central America, Africa and Asia. It closes April 24.
The museum is at 2416 N. Mills Ave.; 407-896-4231; www.omart.org.
