Frida Kahlo, “Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair (Autorretrato con pelo cortado)” (1940), oil on canvas (Digital Picture © 2025 MoMA, N.Y.; © 2025 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Belief, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)
In a stroke of serendipity, Mary Reynolds, American specialist of bindings of Dada and Surrealist publications and accomplice of Marcel Duchamp, inspired Kahlo to remain in her house in Paris following her hospital discharge. The guide Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds, a companion to an exhibition of the identical identify on the Artwork Institute of Chicago, chronicles Kahlo’s brief encounter with the world of French Surrealists at Reynolds’s house.
Man Ray, “Mary Reynolds” (1930) (© 2025 Man Ray Belief / Artist Rights Society (ARS) New York / ADAGP Paris)
Astutely conceptualized as a “Surrealist Drama in Five Acts,” the guide was collaboratively written by exhibition curators Caitlin Haskell, Tamar Kharatishvili, and Alivé Piliado Santana, who clarify that “Kahlo’s time at 14 rue Hallé gives us a glimpse into the everyday life that is needed to sustain artists’ work.” Whereas getting ready for Mexique, which additionally included images by Manuel Alvarez Bravo and pre-Columbian artwork at Paris’s Galerie Renou et Colle, Kahlo spent a month communing at Reynolds’s house, a most marvelous assembly area for creatives, generously adorned with uncommon supplies, objects, and artwork.
Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris, although aiming to centralize the titular figures’ friendship on the peak of European fashionable artwork, is in the end extra about Reynolds and her ingenious creative guide bindings than anything. The publication contains photographs of an interesting collection of artwork books that Duchamp and Reynolds sure for his or her closest buddies in pure and artificial supplies akin to leather-based, silk, vellum, and animal skins.
Their curiosity in natural kinds and textures might be seen in a duplicate of French author Alfred Jarry’s 1896 play Ubu Roi (“King Ubu”), sure in tan goatskin with gold stamping. One other visible standout from the gathering is the 1936 Les derniers jours (“The Last Days”) by French poet Raymond Queneau, sure in black calfskin and agate marble with gold stamping by Reynolds.
Mary Reynolds and Marcel Duchamp’s binding of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu roi (King Ubu), sure in 1935 (picture courtesy the Artwork Institute of Chicago, Mary Reynolds Assortment, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries)
The guide additionally introduces a number of individuals who had been instrumental in Kahlo’s profession in Europe and entangled with Reynolds, together with artists Constantin Brâncuși and Man Ray, artwork seller Pierre Colle, and artwork collectors akin to Peggy Guggenheim. Via people, artwork books, letters, and images, it vividly encapsulates the huge mental, materials, and inventive sphere Kahlo engaged with in only a month, at the same time as she rejected Breton’s “Surrealist” label for her work.
The exact second when and the way Kahlo and Reynolds first met stays unknown, however the blossoming of their felicitous friendship demonstrates a profound connection between their lives and artwork, one which mirrors the emphasis on probability discoveries in Surrealism itself. Amid Kahlo’s letters and work, a 1939 typed letter by Reynolds to the artist acts as a testomony to the lasting impression of their temporary friendship. “The house is still and doesn’t know itself,” she wrote. “Every single thing misses you tremendously.”
Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds (2025), by Caitlin Haskell, Tamar Kharatishvili, and Alivé Piliado Santana, is printed by the College of Chicago Press and out there on-line or by means of unbiased booksellers.
