Feb. 16, 1939: “I bet you my life I will hate this place and its people as long as I live,” an exhausted Frida Kahlo writes to her partner from her hospital bed in Paris. “There is something so false and unreal about them that they drive me nuts. I am just hoping to get well soon and scram from here.”
It was a bumpy first few days in the city of lights for the groundbreaking Mexican artist, who quickly contracted a kidney infection. But the rest of Kahlo’s trip ended up creating lasting friendships that shaped the start of her international career.
The Art Institute of Chicago documents this quick but pivotal trip in “Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds,” on display through July 13.
This is the first time the museum is displaying Kahlo’s art and the exhibition is free to attend with a valid DePaul ID.
Split into four parts, the exhibition features several of Kahlo’s self-portraits, including “Self-Portrait with Monkey” (1938), two handwritten letters and a still life painting in tandem with the book bindings of Mary Reynolds. She’s the artist who invited Kahlo to stay with her to recover from the kidney infection.
Pieces in Reynolds’ personal collection, including a painting by fellow surrealist Salvador Dalí, give a glimpse into what it was like to be a guest, as Kahlo was, in the American artist’s home.
Tamar Kharatishvili, cocurator of the exhibit and a research fellow at the museum, wrote in a statement to The DePaulia that The Art Institute “is arguably the only museum that could tell the story of Kahlo’s and Reynolds’s meeting” because it houses the Mary Reynolds Collection.
At the time of Kahlo’s trip, both women were better known for being the partners of prominent male artists: Kahlo as muralist Diego Rivera’s wife, and Reynolds as surrealist Marcel Duchamp’s partner.
“We were interested in exploring these parallels between the two women, centering their artistic practices, and thinking critically about where and how surrealism took place,” Kharatishvili wrote.
Kahlo was invited to Paris by André Breton, cofounder of the surrealist movement, to exhibit her work, but she had reservations about being called a ‘surrealist.’ She was caught off guard by those who’d “sit for hours on the ‘cafés’ warming their precious behinds … poisoning the air with theories and theories that never come true,” as she wrote in one of the letters on display.
“I do think that she recognized that there was a very close connection between what she was doing and the world she lived in, as opposed to the surrealists who she felt were more disconnected from everyday life,” said Delia Cosentino, a professor in DePaul’s History of Art & Architecture program who specializes in Mexican art.
On a layover in Chicago, three flight attendants from Serbia said they were visiting the exhibition on their first day ever in the United States.
Jelena Šovljanski, one of the flight attendants, said she has been a fan of Kahlo’s since elementary school and won a scholarship for a dress she made that was inspired by Kahlo’s life.
When asked what aspect of Kahlo’s life she would want to bring into her own life, Šovljanski said being “mentally really strong.”
Several pieces on display — “Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair” (1940), “The Wounded Deer” (1946) and “Tree of Hope, Remain Strong” (1946) — are products of Kahlo’s intimate exploration of her injuries and tumultuous relationships, along with her embrace of her Mexican identity.
In “Tree of Hope, Remain Strong,” Kahlo paints herself lying down on a gurney with incisions on her back, referencing a recent surgery, next to another version of herself sitting up, wearing a traditional Tehuana dress and looking at the observer head-on.
Mariana Vargas, an international student at Loyola University Chicago from Colombia, said this piece illustrates Kahlo’s embrace of being Mexican.
Kahlo’s pride in being Latina, Vargas said, is “one of the most powerful messages that she gives,” Vargas said. “I think that’s something that I can relate (to) as well.”
(Zoey Duchene)
Cosentino, the DePaul professor, said the commercialization of Kahlo’s image in pop culture unfortunately often “overshadows the ways in which she was an important agent in identity formation in modern Mexico” post-revolution.
Ultimately, Cosentino said one of the exhibition’s most valuable contributions is how it reveals the “transatlantic network” of artists and thinkers that Kahlo and Rivera were a part of.
Cosentino said it’s also a good introduction to Kahlo’s work: “If that’s the beginning for somebody, that’s fantastic.”
The Art Institute hosts lectures, free with museum admission, for various exhibits. Upcoming lectures for this exhibition include “For the Love of Art — Mary Reynolds and Marcel Duchamp” on May 10 and “Frida Kahlo — The City, the Body, and the Gods” on June 21.
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