Frida in America: The Impact of Place

 

The Walnut Creek Library Foundation’s Live! From the Library series will host author and professor Celia Stahr as she discusses the birth of her book, Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist, and the birth of Frida Kahlo’s creative development and artistic breakthroughs during her three years living in the United States. As one of Kahlo’s favorite authors D.H. Lawrence put it: “All art partakes of the Spirit of Place in which it is produced.” This is the theme of Stahr’s presentation. A short Q&A will follow.  Stahr will sign books, which will be available for purchase, and light refreshments will be available.

 

Stahr teaches art history at the University of San Francisco, where she specializes in modern, contemporary, African, and multicultural art, with an emphasis upon issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and class. Stahr is particularly interested in artists who cross cultural boundaries, such as Frida Kahlo. These transnational or “traveling” artists have complicated the neat categories of modernist art history and forced scholars to ask important questions about the discipline and its Eurocentric biases.

Stahr’s book, Frida in America (St. Martin’s Press 2020) was named one of five art books to read in 2021 by Art New England; and Booklist named it in its master list of Editors’ Choice: Adult Books of 2020.

Program sponsors are East Bay Times, Friends of the Walnut Creek Library, and Minuteman Press Lafayette.

 

Program attendees aged 12 and over must show a valid COVID-19 vaccination card or digital vaccine record. Face masks for all individuals over the age of two are encouraged while inside the library.