The Painter and the Communist: Gender, Culture, and the Fleeting Marriage of Ione Robinson and Joseph Freeman, 1929–1932

Abstract

The painter Ione Robinson moved in the same artistic circles as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and other transnational artists who lived in Mexico City during the late 1920s and 1930s. Robinson's life, however, largely remains obscured from history. This article focuses on Robinson's short-lived marriage to the writer and US Communist, Joseph Freeman, to consider the ways in which women negotiated—and ultimately contested—the expectations of their gendered roles as "proper" wives and mothers. As a free spirit, Robinson struggled to mold her life to fit within the boundaries of a traditional marriage, whether living in Mexico or the United States, and she desired above all to paint. Through its examination of Robinson's brief marriage, this article further analyzes the cultural and political environments in which Robinson and Freeman lived, as well as the broader implications of their arguments over the appropriate relationship between art and politics.