Today we admire Kahlo as a revolutionary artist and a feminist, yet her strength grew through physical and emotional adversity. She lived with the lingering effects of childhood polio and in 1925 narrowly escaped death in a horrific bus accident that shattered her pelvis and spine. During her long convalescence, art became a path for survival and self-expression. The difficult circumstances of her health
and disability instilled in her a resolve. For many, Kahlo has become a personal and national symbol. In 1995 the Mexican author Carlos Fuentes reflected on Kahlo’s life:
Our bodies are broken in half. We are two nations … the unrepeatable woman called Frida Kahlo is broken, torn inside her own body much as Mexico is torn outside…. Born with the Revolution, Frida Kahlo both mirrors and transcends the central event of twentieth-century Mexico. She mirrors it in her images of suffering, destruction, bloodshed, mutilation, loss, but also in her image of humor, gaiety, alegría (joy),
that so distinguished her painful life.
Lola Álvarez Bravo
Mexican, 1903–1993
Frida Kahlo, 1945
Gelatin silver print
Throckmorton Fine Art, New York
Kahlo and Lola Álvarez Bravo were friends for many years, and Álvarez Bravo produced striking images of the painter during the last decade of her life. In an interview in 1989, thirty-five years after Kahlo’s death, Álvarez Bravo said, “I insist that Frida was a special being, not a person one ran into every day. When she spoke, when she moved, when she painted, when she expressed herself, she already was inspiring something. To me, she was like birds and flowers and knitted quilts, a Mexican mood concentrated in an epoch and all expressed through her. She was like that.”
[Artwork Description: In this high-level view, as seen reflected in a mirror suspended from the ceiling, Frida Kahlo is positioned on her bed, lying diagonally across it from mid-thigh up. Her right arm is bent at the elbow with her fingers touching her face while the bent left arm hangs alongside her. Her head is small against the large bed pillows. She is wearing a dark traditional peasant blouse with an embroidered border that forms a u-shape across the front. Her hair is pinned up in braids. The crocheted patchwork quilt on which she reposes is visible on the right side, but her splayed out skirt covers the left side. The wooden headboard rises up behind her and the bottom edge of a picture is seen hanging above the bed. The view is framed by the thick rectangular mirror hanging directly above the bed that cuts diagonally across the frame, tilting to the right.]
Lola Álvarez Bravo
Mexican, 1903–1993
Seated Frida in Her Hospital Room with Photographs, about 1940s
Gelatin silver print
Throckmorton Fine Art, New York
[Artwork Description: Frida Kahlo sits in her silver manual wheelchair on the right side of this black and white photograph while her four-poster hospital bed occupies the left side. The bed is made of dark wood and there is a gray bedspread with white and black Indigenous designs along the side and top. Two white pillows lay on top of each other at the head of the bed. Kahlo stares directly at the viewer with her arms folded and hands resting on a pillow in her lap. Her feet are outstretched. She wears a sweatshirt under her traditional huipil that has white spots, a central image on the chest, and a dark neckline. She wears a long flowing black skirt with her hair in braids atop her head with a ribbon woven in. She wears long dangling earrings and a pendant with a long chain reaching to her stomach. She wears multiple rings on both hands. The walls are covered with pleated curtains that extend from the ceiling to the floor. The bottom edge of two paintings are seen on the wall on either side of Kahlo. The one on the left shows the legs of several men sitting in a line. The one on the right shoes fruit in a still life. A dense collage of photos of people covers the bed’s headboard and a framed collection of five head and shoulder portraits is positioned above the collage.]
Juan Guzmán
Mexican, born Germany, 1911–1982
Frida at ABC Hospital Holding Decorated Skull, Mexico, 1950
Gelatin silver print
Throckmorton Fine Art, New York
[Artwork Description: In this photograph, Frida Kahlo lies in bed on her back, yet at a slight angle, propped by a white pillow and a bed that tilts. She has a look of concern on her light-colored skin with her eyes looking straight ahead and mouth slightly open. Her dark hair pulled up with many ribbons on the top of her head. She is wearing a white long-sleeved shirt that is pulled up to expose her decorated plaster cast covering her stomach and chest. There are flowers and circles and zig zags circles painted on it. She is holding a decorated skull. There are patterns covering the entire surface of the skull, slightly raised from the surface of the skull. Frida is written across the top of the skull, near the forehead. She has large rings on each finger of her left hand. In the background is a pile of books and notebooks, and two bottles of medicine. There are a few photographs hanging on the wall as well.]
Juan Guzmán
Mexican, born Germany, 1911–1982
Frida at ABC Hospital Holding a Mirror, Mexico, 1950
Gelatin silver print
Throckmorton Fine Art, New York
[Artwork Description: A black and white photograph of Frida Kahlo lying in bed with her torso in a painted plaster cast and holding a mirror. She is in the center of the photo, laying on her back, propped up with white pillows and is visible from the waist up, her legs under the covers cropped out of the photo. She has a plaster cast around her body, with a circle exposing her stomach, which has a four squares forming one larger square painted on it. Her cast is also covered in paint, there are zig zag lines and round circles painted. She is holding a paintbrush in her right hand and a small round hand mirror in her left. Her left hand is adorned with a large stone ring on each hand. He has her hair parted down the middle and pulled back and there are many ribbons on top of her head. She has light skin and dark hair, full eyebrows, eyes open wide and she’s gazing in the direction of the camera but looking past it. Next to the simple bed frame with vertical slats sits a pile of books, a piece of pottery filled with paintbrushes, and some paintings.]
Florence Arquin
American, 1900–1974
Frida Kahlo in a Wheelchair with a Sun Umbrella, about 1950
Gelatin silver print
Throckmorton Fine Art, New York
[Artwork Description: This is a black and white photograph of Frida Kahlo sitting outside in the sun in front of a wall. Behind Kahlo, part of a window and a doorway in the wall is visible. Above her head is a large white sun umbrella with a scalloped border of long white fringe hanging from the umbrella’s perimeter. Kahlo’s chair is set facing left. Her body is turned left and her head facing the viewer with a slight suggestion of a smile on her face. She wears long dangling gold earrings of an indigenous design. The umbrella fringes hide most of her hair from view but part of a rose is pinned in her hair just above her forehead. She’s leaning back in the chair in a relaxed pose, with her left forearm propped up by the back of the chair. She has two bangles above her left wrist and rings on all the fingers of her left hand, including her thumb; the ring on her middle finger is shaped like a daisy. She wears a hip-length, open-necked blouse with sleeves ending just above the elbow, patterned in large white squares alternating with dark squares, accented with small strips of black, and a pleated skirt. She holds a thick bunch of small dark flowers.]
Gisèle Freund
German, 1908–2000
Frida and Dr. Farill, 1951
Gelatin silver print
Throckmorton Fine Art, New York
Kahlo wrote in her diary, “I’ve been sick for a year now. Seven operations on my spinal column. Doctor Farill saved me. He brought me back the joy of life.” Here, she poses with her surgeon, Dr. Juan Farill. Despite being physically depleted, Kahlo holds her palette, showing strength and determination. On the easel is her last signed self-portrait, painted a few years before her death in 1954.
[Artwork Description: This black and white photograph is taken in a painting studio. Frida is seated in a wheelchair. She is looking at the camera, eyes open, lips closed, her face white with light and her dark hair in braids wrapped around her head. She is wearing earrings, a medallion necklace and a short-sleeved blouse embroidered with large flowers. She has a long skirt covering her legs with pleats near the bottom and is holding a palette on her lap and left arm and has two long slender paintbrushes in the other hand. Standing behind her is a bald, light skinned man wearing a three-piece suit with a white pin striped button down and dark tie under the vest. He has dark eyebrows and is looking past the camera and has his right hand resting on a table at left. Also on this table is a painting of Frida in a large white cape with dark skirts sitting in a wheelchair holding a palette and paintbrushes in front of an easel with a large portrait of the bald man that she is with in the photograph. In the painting she is in an empty room with white walls and a gray lower border with wooden floors. In the actual room, the walls are also white, with a large window at rear left, a bed, a light bulb hanging from a cord, a few tables with assorted things on them including wine and tequila bottles, painters rags and more.]
Frida Kahlo
Mexican, 1907–1954
Collage with Two Flies, 1953
Collage and watercolor on cardboard
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
[Artwork Description: A collage featuring two images side by side and flanked by two illustrated flies. The collages are matted on a piece of brown paper that appears to have been once spiral bound. The brown paper has the shadow of other images and appears slightly smudged and worn. The faint words “Frida Kahlo” in cursive writing appears above the two collaged images. The image on the left depicts a woman playing a harp. She is seen in three quarter view with her back to the viewer. She wears a bright red drapey blouse that has been hand colored. Her hair is pulled back in a bun, she looks down towards her hand. At right is an image of a woman lying in bed holding a bouquet of flowers and looking upwards while a swallow swoops down towards her head with a floral wreath. She is smiling and her eyebrows have been darkened and filled in At the top right corner is an image of a mustached man. Images of flies have been applied at each lower corner of the collages. A thick black line or ribbon underscores the arrangement.]
Frida Kahlo
Mexican, 1907–1954
11:25 (Carma III), 1946
Sepia ink on paper
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
[Artwork Description: A sepia toned surreal landscape accented with various body parts. The upper third of the drawing shows a stormy sky filled with clouds. At the horizon line, two mountains in the form of breasts with erect nipples stand at left. In the center is a sun-like form with the suggestion of a face. The rays resemble flower petals in places. At far right is a moon with a face that sits tilted on a low mountain range. The middle of the drawing contains rough, rocky terrain and a body of water the seems to emanate from a stream or river that recedes towards the horizon. A set of full lips sits on the upper shore of the water near a ying and yang symbol and an eye ball with a clock face for an iris. The eye and lids are labeled “Carma” contained in a rectangle shape. At bottom left on a craggy shore, a hand can be discerned seemingly growing out of the grassy earth and lying flat.]
Frida Kahlo
Mexican, 1907–1954
Masks (Carma I), 1946
Sepia ink on paper
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
Kahlo’s drawings are often fragmented, containing snippets of text and juxtapositions of real and symbolic objects. They are not as clearly interpreted as many of her paintings. Some see a kinship with Surrealism in these works, drawing connections to dreams and explorations of psychological states. Despite her interest in the Surrealists’ ideas, Kahlo did not want her work classified as Surrealist.
[Artwork Description: In this work, Cubist shapes are a background for a chaotic mix of people, animals, plants, and shapes of hands and feet. Three figures dominate the horizontal center of the piece. The figure on the left wears a “U” shaped mask with a flat top. The mask shows black eyebrows, large black eyes, a full nose, and an open mouth. Below the mask is a hairy body with skinny arms and legs. The body is seated with its legs bent and spread apart to show male genitals. He is sitting on shapes of hands and feet. Behind him at each side are child-like figures holding sticks. The stick on his right holds a mask of an upside-down skeleton’s head with a wide open mouth. Behind this mask is the upside-down body of a monkey. The monkey’s head is behind the right shoulder of the seated figure and its legs extend outward and upward. The central figure is standing on dark skinny legs. The head and body are the shape of a cube where the bottom and three sides are visible. The sides all have different faces. The figure at the right is resting on her knees. Her body faces forward and looks like a globe that has cracked open. Her clitoris shows beneath the globe. Her face is in profile and is facing to her left. Her nose touches the nose of a square mask that seems to be worn by some sort of plump animal with a short, dog-like tail. Above these figures at the top left of the piece is an upside-down llama with its feet at the top of the painting and its belly covered with fruits and flowers that are sitting on top of the flat top of the first mask. Next to the llama in the upper center are many different fruits that are sitting on the top of the box-shaped mask. A donkey is next with its head resting on the box and a man’s head resting on its neck. The man is black, his mouth is open, and he has wings coming out from the back of his neck. A person’s legs and rump are climbing onto the back of the donkey at the upper right. The donkey’s belly is above the woman resting on her knees. The foreground is covered with geometric figures and hand shapes.]
Frida Kahlo
Mexican, 1907–1954
Letter, 1943
Colored ink on paper
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
[Artwork Description: An abstract drawing in dark ink, browns, rusty reds, and a bit of pale blue. At center bottom, a bare tree in the rough shape of a cross with two outstretched limbs stands amid a series of wavy, horizontal lines and patches of brown wash. At middle center a lumpy oval hovers among more line work, small red circles, an eye and an infant set in a rough rectangle shape painted with a red wash. The upper portion of the work features eight lines of cursive writing, some of which is overwritten rendering it illegible. The overall look of the work suggests a sense of chaos.]
Frida Kahlo
Mexican, 1907–1954 and anonymous scientific illustrator
Chromophore, Auxochrome, 1944
Printed matter and ink
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
Kahlo altered an illustration from a scientific publication by cutting off the foot, referencing her own amputation. Chromophore and auxochrome refer to two distinct molecular structures that affect the perception of color. Kahlo used the terms in her journals to describe herself and her husband, Diego: “You were called AUXOCHROME the one who captures color. I CHROMOPHORE—the one who gives color.”
[Artwork Description: Two anatomical illustrations depicting a human male. The illustrations sit side by side. At left, a figure is shown without the covering of skin. Veins, arteries, musculature and the skeletal frame are readily visible. The illustration is rendered in gray and reds over a an orangey- brown background of aged paper. The figure stands with the head turned slightly left, the right hand posed with the thumb and middle fingers touching and index finger extended. The left hand is open with palm facing the viewer. At upper right a signature reads “Frida Kahlo 1944. Chromophore, Auxochrome”. At right similar illustration shows the same figure and poses but with skin covering all but the torso. The light skinned man has slicked back dark hair and a waxed mustache. The torso has the internal organs exposed and numbered. It is rendered on a lighter color paper with manufacturing notes at the bottom left and right.]
Frida Kahlo
Mexican, 1907–1954
Untitled, 1932
Lithograph
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
[Artwork Description: A sketch in red pencil depicting the Statue of Liberty with Uncle Sam. Lady Liberty stands with her raised right hand holding an orb labeled “Bombe Atomica” and money sack labeled “Dinero”. Around her neck is a necklace labeled “Collar de Titeres”, from which hangs human figures. Some of the figures are labeled, such as “Papa”, “Hitler”, “Ricos capit.” Liberty stands on a round plinth with decorated with faces. Aspects of this are labeled as well. The head and top hat of “Tio Sam” is positioned just behind Liberty’s head, appearing to look over her shoulder. The overall effect is one of a quickly drawn sketch with labels and notes made for perhaps a future work.]
Frida Kahlo
Mexican, 1907–1954
Frida and the Miscarriage, 1932
Lithograph
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
Kahlo suffered a miscarriage while she and Rivera were in Detroit for his mural commission. While recovering, she experimented with lithography at a local art guild—the only time she tried printmaking. These lithographs are different proofs of the only significant print Kahlo made, often called The Abortion or Frida and the Miscarriage. She depicts herself divided between light and dark, life and death, motherhood and being an artist.
[Artwork Description: The lithograph is divided longitudinally into three sections. Frida stands naked in the center. To her right are dividing cells and a fetus. To her left are different symbols relating to her life. Frida is looking to her right so that only her left ear is visible. Her hair is pulled back and parted in the middle with braids across the top of her head and a braided bun showing behind her ear. Her eyes are almond shaped with the brows meeting at the top of her nose. A large teardrop is below each eye. Two arms hang straight down at her sides. A third arm reaches out to her left side and is holding a heart shaped easel. She is wearing a double string of beads around her neck. Her shoulders and right side except for her right breast are white. The left side of her face and the rest of her body are shaded gray. A fetus is curled at her abdomen just above her pubic hair. Small, white, teardrop shaped drops run down the center of her left leg from below the pubic hair. They continue to go over her foot and onto the ground to stop near a pile of what appears to be a pile of dirt. A thin line begins at the center of the fetus and wraps around her right leg in five descending curls to her ankle. From there it continues on to attach to the belly of a baby at the bottom left side of the piece. The baby is sitting up cross-legged with its arms at its chest and head facing to its right. Above the baby are two amoeba shapes that are placed one above the other that are touching at the center. Above them are two of the same shapes which are close but not touching. Each shape has what appears to be an eye or a nucleus. Small black arrows point toward each other at the intersection of the shapes. On the right side at the level of Frida’s head is a sphere containing a profile of a face with two tear drops. Below this is Frida’s third arm holding the heart shaped easel. One horizontal line runs from the center of her thigh and another from the center of her calf to the right edge of the piece. On the top line are thin, curved lines that resemble worms or sperm. On the bottom line, grass and three plants are growing with their roots spreading below the line. The plants differ in the types of leaves and root systems, but all appear to be cacti of some kind. The roots are growing toward what appears to be a pile of dirt. The drops from her vagina end at this same pile.]
Frida Kahlo
Mexican, 1907–1954
Drawing with Foot, n.d.
Colored pencil and graphite on paper
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
[Artwork Description: A abstract pencil sketch featuring organic shapes including a foot positioned at far left, an eye with eyelids, two breasts at far right, and several leaf-like structures among others. These are all surrounded by the suggestion of vines, veins or roots that join the different elements of the drawing into a mass. At the upper edge of the mass four egg shaped objects sprout bare branches. The cream colored paper is slightly wrinkled and bears a company name watermark. At lower right, the artist has signed her name, “Frida.”]
Frida Kahlo
Mexican, 1907–1954
Self-Portrait on Bed, 1937
Oil on metal
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
“I had so looked forward to having a little ‘Dieguito’ that I cried a lot, but it’s over, there is nothing else that can be done except to bear it,” Kahlo wrote in 1932 after her first miscarriage. Here, Kahlo sits on a child’s bed, smoking a cigarette with an air of emotional detachment. Due to the injuries she suffered in a bus accident, Kahlo was unable to bear children and fulfill the traditional role of Mexican womanhood: to be a dutiful wife and mother. She defied gendered expectations and found resilience living an independent life as an artist and activist.
[Artwork Description: In this painting, a woman is sitting in the middle of a single, child-sized bed. A doll sits on her left side. The wall behind is bare. The woman’s body is facing forward with her head turned slightly to the right. Her dark eyes are looking to the left. Her skin is a dark reddish-brown. Her hair is pulled up into a coiled braid at the top of her head. Her eyebrows are thick and meet in the center. Her nose is wide and rounded at the end. Her mouth is slightly pursed. Her hands are crossed in her lap with the right hand crossed over the left. The right hand is holding a cigarette. She is wearing a white blouse and a long green skirt. The blouse has short sleeves and a scooped neck. The neckline is embroidered with flowers. The skirt has a wide white border that touches the red-tiled floor. The frame of the bed is made of light brown wood and fills the width of the picture frame. The short headboard is at the right edge. The doll is unclothed. It sits between the woman and the headboard with its right foot touching the woman’s skirt. It sits with its legs bent akimbo and its arms bent at the elbow and reaching forward. It is facing the same direction as the woman is looking. The body is white. The painted face has brown eyes, thick black eyebrows, and pink cheeks with freckles. The hair is only on the top of the head and is short, brown, and curly. The wall behind the bed has a marbled appearance in light shades of brown, white, and pink.]