Frida Kahlo grew up in the Coyoacán neighborhood of Mexico City. As a teenager, she sustained life-altering injuries in a bus accident and turned to art during her convalescence. She became a painter of insightful portraits and narratives, basing her unique portrait style in part on the ex-voto tradition of religious painting. The daughter of a German father and a Mexican mother, Kahlo embraced her mestizo heritage in her life and her art.
Diego Rivera, born in Guanajuato in Central Mexico, was among the most celebrated artists of the day, best known for his murals in Mexico and the United States. In 1931 he was the second artist to be honored with a solo retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (Henri Matisse was the first). Kahlo and Rivera met in 1927 while she was an art student. United by their shared passion for art and radical politics, they married in 1929. The couple was at the center of artistic and political circles in Mexico City.
The photographs in this section capture their loving and complicated relationship. Kahlo’s parents famously described the match as a “marriage between an elephant and a dove.” Their partnership included artistic competition and interpersonal conflicts but also devoted companionship and shared interests such as their political activism. Despite the volatility of their marriage, they had deep admiration for each other’s art.
Artist unknown
Frida and Diego Kissing Following Their Second Wedding, After Signing Their Marriage Certificate, San Francisco, 1940
Gelatin silver print
Throckmorton Fine Art, New York
Divorced in 1939, Kahlo and Rivera remarried on December 8, 1940, Rivera’s fifty-fourth birthday. That year Rivera was working on murals at San Francisco Junior College (now City College). Kahlo traveled to California for medical treatment and reunited with him there.
[Artwork Description: A black and white photograph showing Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo embracing and kissing one another. The couple are pictured from the waist up with their arms around each other. Rivera has light colored skin and curly dark hair. He wears a dark suit shirt and tie. His eyes are closed, and his head is lowered towards Kahlo. His left hand rests on her upper back and his right hand clutches her left arm. Kahlo is at right, her head titled back, dark hair swept up in braids on top of her head, accented with pale flowers. She wears large dangling earrings and a dark shawl on her shoulders with several strands of beaded necklaces. Her left hand rest on Rivera’s chest. The photo is closely cropped, and a hand of an unseen figure is reaching out to the couple and appears where Rivera clutches Kahlo’s arm.]
Diego Rivera
Mexican, 1886–1957
Nude with Beads (Frida Kahlo), 1930
Lithograph
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
The intimate scene depicts Kahlo wearing one of her signature necklaces of large pre-Hispanic beads, her hands behind her head and gazing downward. In her self-portraits and in many photographs, Kahlo often looks directly at the viewer. Here, Rivera shows her in a more demure pose.
[Artwork Description: Small lithograph of Frida Kahlo, sitting nude at the end of a bed, arms behind her head as if she is unclasping her double strand beaded necklace. Detailed shading outlines her muscles. She has a small waist with her belly skin sinking in slightly above her belly button. Below her dark, triangular shaped pubic hair is shaded in. She wears thigh-high nylons and has her right leg tucked behind her left. She has a muscular left calf and is wearing dark colored high heels with thick heels with a square bottom. Her breasts are pulled upward as her muscular arms rise above her shoulders, hands at the back of her head. Her eyes are closed and head angled downward. Her hair is parted in the middle and pulled into a bun. Her necklace is comprised of about 25 beads on each of the strands. The bed frame is outlined, with shadows hatched into the wood and under the bed. There appear to be horizontal wood beams along the wall and a night stand with a small drawer to the right of the bed. There are pillows on the bed, one directly behind her right hip, with two fabric circles on it. The bottom right shows Diego Rivera’s signature reading “D.R. 30”. Letters in pencil below the lithograph read “Diego Rivera 1930. 86-100.”]
Frida Kahlo
Mexican, 1907–1954
Portrait of Arcady Boytler, 1947
Pencil on paper
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
Arcady Boytler was a Russian producer, screenwriter, and director who immigrated to Mexico in 1930. He became a close friend of Kahlo, who portrayed him in this drawing with a third eye in the center of his forehead, believed in some spiritual traditions to be the gateway to the inner realms of consciousness.
[Artwork Description: A pencil sketch of the head of a man is shown from his collarbone to the top of his head. He has a third eye in the middle of his forehead. This third eye has the shape of an eye, but there is no attempt to make it look realistic. An almond shaped outline has a gray circle in the middle with a black dot in the center. There are no lashes or brows. The rest of the sketch looks life-like. He is looking to the left so that only the left ear shows. He is balding except for wisps of hair showing above the ear. He appears to be amused with the edges of his mouth turned up into a slight smile and eyes that are squinting slightly and looking straight at the viewer. His eyebrows are sketched with many lines so that they appear quite thick. He has a full lower lip and thin upper lip. The pencil lines are lightly sketched except for the outline of the eyes, the slope of the nose, the upper lip, the outline of the ear, and the right side of his face. These are all outlined with dark pencil. Light pencil lines from the edge of his nostrils to the corners of his mouth soften his face. Other lines on his cheeks and neck make him appear older. His chin has a cleft. A very light line traces his rounded shirt collar and shoulders.]