Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) carefully and meticulously accumulated a vast collection of photographs over the course of her life. This exhibition presents 241 unpublished photographs that represent diverse periods and people in the artist’s life explored in six central themes: Origins; The Blue House; Politics, Revolutions and Diego; Her Broken Body; Frida’s Loves; and Photography. Photographers featured in the exhibition include her father Guillermo Kahlo, as well as Man Ray, Martin Munkácsi, Edward Weston, Brassaï, Tina Modotti, Pierre Verger and Lola & Manuel Álvarez Bravo.

When Frida Kahlo died in 1954, her husband Diego Rivera donated their house – Casa Azul in Mexico City – to the Mexican people, so that it could become a museum about her life and work. The home is now the site of Museo Frida Kahlo, one of the most visited museums in the world. Upon donating her artworks and objects to the museum, Rivera asked to lock part of them away from public view; this personal archive included more than six thousand photographs, drawings, letters, medicine and clothes. These items were kept in a Casa Azul bathroom for five decades, until they were revealed in 2003. A selection of this discovery is the basis of this exhibition curated by Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, Mexican photographer and historian of photography in Mexico.

An exhibition by

Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Archives. Bank of Mexico, Fiduciary in the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Museum Trust

Worldwide tour managed by

The exhibition is presented by the El Paso Museum of Art in collaboration with El Consulado General de México en El Paso and el Centro Cultural Mexicano Paso del Norte.

Generous support for this exhibition is provided by the El Paso Museum of Art Foundation, the Wilma Moleen Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Texas Commission on the Arts.