Frida and Georgia

When: Frida Kahlo: Oct. 27–Jan. 20; Georgia O'Keeffe: Oct. 7–Jan. 6
Where: Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Ave., 612-375-7600; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2400 3rd Ave. S., 612-870-3131

Countless calendars, mugs, and mouse pads feature works by Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keeffe. Even if you’ve never seen an exhibition, odds are you’ve glimpsed Kahlo’s self-portrait imprinted on a T-shirt or a poster of Georgia O’Keeffe’s orange poppies; evidence of the artists popular appeal and, arguably, their overexposure. But two exhibits opening in October—O’Keeffe at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Kahlo at the Walker Art Center—promise to explore some new dimensions of these iconic artists.

“The [Kahlo] exhibition will be filled with surprises and epiphanies,” says Walker associate curator Elizabeth Carpenter. Co-curated by Hayden Herrera, the show features fifty paintings spanning Kahlo’s artistic career, reflecting the intensely personal, cathartic quality of her art, as well as her radical defiance of convention. Where Kahlo’s work is intensely representational, O’Keeffe’s walks the line between representation and abstraction. Circling Around Abstraction looks at O’Keeffe’s use of circular forms as a new point of entry for exploring that critical gray area. Says the show’s acting curator Sue Canterbury, “[The circular motif] was a portal, creating a void that, in its emptiness and sense of infinity, was really the focus of the work.”