According to the DIA website, “The exhibition will explore the tumultuous and highly productive year that Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo spent in Detroit, a pivotal turning point in each artist’s career. Between April 1932 and March 1933, Rivera created one of his most accomplished mural cycles—Detroit Industry—on the four walls of a centrally located courtyard at the DIA. At the same time and largely unnoticed, Kahlo developed her now-celebrated artistic identity. By including works before, during and after their time in Detroit, the exhibition also looks at the evolution of each artist’s career, a subject that has never been fully studied in an exhibition or catalogue.

“Rivera’s epic preparatory drawings for Detroit Industry will be the centerpiece of the exhibition. Not shown in almost 30 years, these magnificent works demonstrate Rivera’s sweeping narrative ambition, envisioned as a synthesis between Mexico’s spiritual values and United States industrial might. Most of the works Kahlo created in Detroit will be shown for the first time in this city and will reveal the emergence of Kahlo’s shockingly personal, self-revelatory art style.

Along with approximately 70 works of art, the exhibition will examine the economic conditions of the era, the industrial life of Detroit and its workers and the controversy that surrounded the Detroit Industry murals. Photographs of Rivera and Kahlo at work and at play will also be on view.”

Check out these cool events in correspondence with the exhibition!

Diego and Frida’s Detroit: Bus Tour– March 21st

Join the Detroit Experience Factory for a tour through Frida and Diego’s Detroit. See the places and discuss the themes that defined Detroit in the early 1930s. Learn about the city in which both artists created groundbreaking work and find out why Detroit continues to be a place defined by industry, social change and the arts.